Leicester College has been supporting learners on a foundation degree course to maintain interest over the summer break through the process of reflective thinking and creation of a blog. They used the Colleges e-Portfolio tool, Mahara, to allow learners to undertake a short project around Photography and Video and the write a reflective blog to share what they were doing with colleagues on the course. The learners found this useful despite a few technical issues they needed to overcome. All the learners returned to next year which was an improvement on previous years where several did not return.
They sought to extend this further and worked with De Montfort University to develop a peer mentoring scheme for students transferring from the college to undertake a degree course after completing their foundation degree at the college. The same portfolio tools were used to provide the students with a peer who had previously completed the transition to the degree courses at the University.
The initial pilot had limited success however the college hoped that the approach could be developed for future cohorts. This project shows some of the challenges of extending an approach from one institution to another. A similar peer support process is being developed at De Montford University for graphics students and is working well.
Further information is available from the project website at http://hello.lec.ac.uk/
