Mentoring Website

Here is the link to this mentoring website I found. It has some pretty good ideas for training and best practices for mentoring. http://www.mentoringgroup.com/index.html#

My final thoughts

Hello everyone,

It is my last day in the office today at CELT at BCU and I'm very sad to be leaving. Unfortunately I can't make it to see Kirk and the team come from America because I will be living at home back in Leicester with my sister and my newly born Nephew. So I would just like to take the opportunity to apologise to Kirk and any of his company that has travelled over for not be able to attend the few days you are here. However, I do wish you a great stay and hope you enjoy your time in England and hopefully, I will see you soon whether its over in America or in England next academic year!! Hopefully you will be blogging any thoughts or ideas for the scheme that you come you come up with anyway.

I would also like to say that my time at CELT running the StAMP team alongside Luke and Melissa has been brilliant and I have taken a lot way from it. I want to thank Luke and Melissa a lot for helping me to develop as a person and a professional. It has been pretty dam sweet this year and I look forward to a couple of months time when I will be back for my third year at BCU and hopefully more time at CELT! I hope the StAMP scheme or some other form of mentoring scheme will be up and running by this time because I would definitely like to be a part of it again. Apart from that I don't really have much else to say besides have a good summer everyone!

My posts that I've left on the blog are all work and checklists that I have been conducting on my own, so if anyone needs them to refer to then they will just be on here.

Au revoir,
Jamie

Ceara Hodierne Interview Questions

Due to the student name above not being able to travel in to the University I let her fill out a series of questions instead of conducting the filmed interview.

Interview Questions for Ceara Hodierne

•        Introduction – Can you please state your name and faculty?

My name is Ceara Hodierne, I am studying Nursing Adult DipHE. 

•        Why did you get involved with the scheme?

I wanted to be a student academic mentor for several reasons: firstly because I am  due to qualify in September and one of the desirable requirements for a staff nurse is to have mentoring experience which I knew would be achieved throough succesful completion of this post, therefore I knew that being a Student Academic Mentor would make me more employable. Secondly, I was excited to get involved with a scheme that allowed me to combine my Nursing with my passion for teaching.  Thirdly, the memories of being a student not knowing exactly what to do and feeling as though I had been thrown into the deep end therefore I wanted to be there to prevent students from feeling that way or supporting them if they do. Lastly, I was looking for an additional form of employment.

•        How have you found working on the scheme so far?

Originally I found that the BCU didn't have much direction for us with regards to what they wanted us to do, therefore the primary challenge of working on the scheme was to identify areas of the university where students lacked support and create a demand for our service. This was an interesting challenge that made the experience of actually supporting students more wothwhile because I had worked hard to identify where help was needed, implemented the help and received postive feedback. It has been an enjoyable expeirence work as a team to create resources and plan sessions and I have found that I  have been able to develop key organisation and communication skills .

•        How has the relationship with your staff partner been?

I have received lots of support when I have asked for it.

•        How has the relationship with your mentees been?

The mentees appear to be very comfortable approaching me in sessions and through email. They have been responsive to my feedback and grateful for the extra support, especially when councilling students on a one to one basis.

•        Can you briefly describe some of the things you have been doing?

As stated above I have needed to identify where there was a demand for the Student Academic Service therefore I have been corresponding with lots of different members of staff within the Personal Development Department, Numeracy Support, the head of the Mahara E-Learning Portfolio programme and various other staff. From that I have been given the task of possibly creating new practise papers for the numeracy exams, I have a meeting with the head of Numeracy to discuss how much he wants me to be involved with numeracy. I have assisted with the development of materials and resources to support students with Mahara, attended meetings in order to coordinate the Mahara support and have succesfully completed a Mahara drop in session and I am currently working on organising further sessions. I have also assisted students with Mahara queries which has included them emailing my student account with questions and I have responded to them with both the answers and helpful guides and information for them to read.

I plan to attend my old senior school with the university to encourage the student their to undertake Nursing as a career and to explain to them what the course entails and what achievements I have gained from the course. I am due to support one of the members of staff with a new online resource where I will be testing it for the new students.

•        What difficulties have you come across so far?

Creating a demand for our service, it has required iniatiative and investigation but it has made the outcome more rewarding.

•        Do you feel that you have helped students?

Definitly, I have had some excellent feedback from students.

•        How have you gone about planning your sessions?

By meeting with my fellow mentors to coordinate the materials and resources, meeting with the mentors before our Mahara session to plan what information we can give, it what format, style etc. Due to the fact that our first student contact was a drop in session we couldn't really plan the session as the help we would be providing the students would be based upon their individual needs however we did decide that we were going to approach the students on an individual basis and rather than answering their questions or completing a Mahara activity for them, we would instead give them the helpful resources we had created and give them the oppertunity to do it themselves.

•        What resources have you used?

Internet, Mahara, email, posters and forums.

•        What are you most proud of?

Our first Mahara drop in session, we released the email on Thursday to say that there would be a session the following Monday and ten people attended the session and left having achieved a goal such as submitting a Mahara page, identifying what needed to be achieved on each Mahara page or completing a personal development plan. It was particuarly satisfying to see a session that we had created resources for, that we had planned, that we had advertised and that we had run be so succesful.

•        Is there anything you can think of to help improve the scheme?

No.

•        Has your attitude towards University life changed since becoming part of the scheme?

Yes, you don't realise how much support is available to students until you become part of the team trying to make students aware of it and encouraging them to ask it.

Thank you for taking your time out to answer all these questions.

Regards,

The StAMP team. 

Final Interview Check-list

Hey guys this is the final check-list for our interview process. These are all the people that I have managed to interview. A lot of people ignored so if it looks a bit empty most of them didn't reply. These interviews are mostly stored on the Voxur, but there are a couple of the flip camera and on phones. 

Interview Checklist for Mid-Evaluation

Adam Bradbury;

Adrian Mateescu;                       12/06/2012                    2:00pm                                     DONE

Afzal Miah;

Alex Kempster;

Algirdas Sakickas;

Ayaz Mahmood;

Camilla-Corrine Harvey;

Ceara Hodierne;                        26/06/2012                    15:00pm                                   DONE

Charlotte Greenhalgh;                7/06/2012                     12:00pm                                    DONE

Chris Horrocks;

Christelle Roberts;                      24/05/2012 -                 12:00pm -                                 DONE

Christina James;                        8/06/2012                     10:30am                                    DONE

Christopher Newnham;

Christopher Powell;

Dayle Stancliffe;

Emma Buckley; 

Emma Sinha;                             7/06/2012                     11:00am                                    DONE

Fawaz Jokogbola;                      23/05/2012 –                 15:00pm -                                  DONE

Henry Nnani;                                                                                                                   DONE

Iram Nazz;                                6/06/2012                     11:00am                                     DONE

Jamie Morris;                                                                                                                  DONE

Jane Croke;                                                                                                                    DONE

Joan Bounds;

Joanne Hall;

Jonathan Bridgewater;               9/05/2012 –                   13:00pm -                                  DONE

Jonathan Colen;

Kapil Kapur;                              13/06/2012                    9:45am                                      DONE

Katie Hodrien;                           14/06/2012                    12:30pm                                     DONE

Kerri O'Shea;                             20/06/2012                    11:00am                                    DONE

Khadija Tul Kubra;

Lorenzo Beretta;                        12/06/2012                    13:00pm                                    DONE

Luke Seager; 

Mahatama Uppal;                       10/05/2012 –                 13:00pm -                                 DONE

Mantas Jankus;                          26/06/2012                    4:00pm                                     DONE

Maria Gulzar;                             23/05/2012 –                 13:00pm                                   DONE

Mariam Mahmood;                     23/05/2012-                  11:30am -                                 DONE

Martina Branimirova Aleksieva;                                                                                        DONE

Mayank Goel;                            15/06/2012                    15:00pm                                    DONE

Megan Caulfield;                        27/06/2012                    12:00pm                                   DONE

Melissa Johnston;                      15/06/2012                    13:00pm                                   DONE

Melissa Tisdale;                         9/05/2012 –                   14:00pm                                   DONE

Michele Prosser;                        12/06/2012                    10:00am                                   DONE

Minh Truong;                             20/06/2012                    14:00pm                                   DONE

Natalie Harris;

Nierodha Perera;

Philip Rumenov Stoyanov;

Rares Hasmasan;

Reema Angrish; 

Richard Burke;                           19/06/2012                    1:00pm                                     DONE

Rory Patrick Howard Unwin;

Ross Golightly;                           12//06/2012                  10:00am                                   DONE

Sheikh Sela;

Siara Nawaz;                             4/07/2012                     11:00am                                   DONE

Sihlangu Tshuma;                      15/06/2012                    4:00pm                                     DONE

Sophie Hibbs;                            13/06/2012                    15:00pm                                   DONE

Uzair Delair;

Varshini Narayanan;                   14/06/2012                    12:00pm                                   DONE

Victoria Caroline Kiff;                  23/05/2012                    12:00pm                                   DONE

Vijaya Jyothsna;                                    13/06/2012                    15:00pm at Gosta Green DONE