Evaluation of inductions

Evaluation of Training Days - 30^th March

Reflecting back on the very first training session on 30^th March, it’s clear that there were issues that needed to be resolved, confidence that needed to be worked upon and question’s that needed specific answers.

Considering it was the first training session, it did go well, it’s inevitable that there were always going to be difficulties in the first session but despite those it went quite smoothly.

Some of the issue that I believe we need to work on as a team are:

-       Knowing the next steps for mentors, how they recruit mentees and who their staff partners are.

-       Time keeping of how long activities should last

-       Interact with the mentors more

-       Get the mentors to present their findings themselves

-       Spelling mistakes on the slide show

Some of the issues I believe I personally need to work on are:

-       My confidence to speak out loud in front of people

-       My ability to speak with out reading it of the sheet

There are many things that I felt went very well also and this is where we as team came out on top some of these are:

-       Intervals where either myself or one of the other speakers went blank not knowing what to say, at that point we would jump in and help out.

-       Improvising when Centre of academic success never showed up

-       Icebreaker worked very well as it got people talking

-       Presentation flowed very well, we were organised, knowing which slides we were going to present

The things I personally feel we need to do to make future sessions more beneficial are being more prepared with their questions about mentee recruitment and staff partners. The only other thing I feel needs changing is the amount in which Luke Nagle has to present I feel that it will benefit myself and Jamie if we took more control within the sessions.

3^rd April

Reflecting back on the second training session on 3^rd April, it was clear that many of the issues that were addressed after first one had been resolved, however, there were still a few things that still needed clarifying.

With regards to things that we still need to work on are:

-       Uncertainty about how they were going to recruit mentees

-       Uncertainty about who their staff partners were

-       Myself and Jamie need to start taking more control over the sessions

With regards to how I performed during this second session I feel that my confidence improved, I wasn’t as nervous as the I was for the session before, this may be because there wasn’t as many mentors watching in this session. I also managed to improvise with my speech without having to look at the sheet of paper I had prepared; this did however, made me stumble on my words a few times. Practice however, will make it better over time.

The things that work particularly well during this induction were:

-       The time length of the session seemed much better, it never dragged on quite as much

-       Engaging and interacting with the mentors

-       As a team we showed much more confidence in our presenting

-       Able to answer some questions better then we had done in the previous session.

When comparing the first session to the second one, its clear of what changes had been made and how it had effected the induction as a whole. The main thing I feel that improved was our confidence and this in effect made everything a lot smoother.

Next Steps

To make our next session ever more of a success I feel that we need to continue engaging with the mentors, as I feel it’s a more effective way of them learning, over us talking at them constantly, I also believe that myself and Jamie should undertake more control throughout the sessions. With regards to the questions about how to recruit mentees and how to find out who their staff partners are I believe there are many things that they and we could do.

Recruiting Mentees

-       Go in to lectures, tell the students about themselves and their projects

-       E-mail lecturers to let them know about the projects

-       Put up posters

-       Generic E-mail

-       Advertisement on Moodle or Icity

However, with regards to staff partners I believe that its important that the mentors, contact their head of faculty themselves to show initiative. Luke Millard could also send out a generic E-mail to all faculties as a warning as such that mentors are unsure about whom their staff partners are so they’d be prepared for when the mentors E-mail them themselves.