Mentor meetings

Brief description

A mentor scheme may provide first-year students with an opportunity to address the challenges they encounter in their student life and academic work and ease their transition to life as a university student. The mentor scheme may be organised as regular meetings between first-year students and an older or previous student, such as a PhD student or a research assistant within the same field of study.

Motivation for the exercise and required outcome

At the mentor meetings, the new students have an opportunity to reflect on and address the doubts and challenges they experience in their new field of study. The mentor scheme may contribute to normalising some of the common challenges experienced by students. At the same time, the mentors’ stories of how they tackled the common challenges may give the new students an idea of how they can respond to and tackle similar challenges. This may have a positive effect on both their social and academic integration in the learning environment. Moreover, it provides the individual student with a sense of being “seen”.

Performing the exercise

You as a teacher or mentor coordinator must begin by finding a group of mentors who would like to be involved in the initiative. Discuss for instance with your head of section whether the hours spent by older or previous students may be counted as working time, or whether the activity must be based on voluntary involvement.

Start by assigning a mentor to the students (preferably during the introduction week). The mentor may be a teacher, a PhD student or a research assistant attached to the department. Each mentor is assigned to four to six students per year group, and the time they spend on their involvement is counted as working time.

The mentor appointments may be based on an open dialogue between students and mentors, but they may also take place on the basis of a written reflection paper submitted by the students before the mentor appointment. This may include:
- The student’s reasoned grounds for selecting their degree programme, including a reflection regarding their ideas of the degree programme prior to starting their studies, and how their perception of what the programme involves has changed.
- A reflection by the students as to which specialisation they consider choosing and why, and what they want to use their acquired skills for later. This causes career relevance to be included in their reflection

Variation options:

Some mentor appointments may take the form of individual development dialogues, if the students need this. The framework for the meetings must be made clear to the students and mentors so that they know what is expected of them.

Before the mentor meeting, the students may write down some questions which they may try to answer in the group. The mentor will then take on the role of facilitator or provider of extra support if the group members cannot answer a question.

Worth considering:

Who are well suited to be mentors? It may be an advantage if mentors are deeply committed to the well-being of the students.

What should be the composition of students and mentors?

How often should the meetings take place? Will one scheduled meeting with the option of a subsequent follow-up session be enough? Or will it be more helpful to schedule the meetings currently during the first year of study?

Where should the meetings take place? Meetings outside of the university campus promote a more informal dialogue, whereas meetings on campus take place in a room where everyone feels a sense of belonging.

Mentor scheme one-to-one

Here is a concrete example of how a teacher has used the activity in practice.

Mentor scheme in groups

Here is a concrete example of how a teacher has used the activity in practice.

Revised 24.11.2023

AU Educate