Student mentor bogs 2

My name is Holly and I am a second year Health and Social Care student. I am a Digital Skills Mentor for the module Research and Professional Practice for the first year students studying Health and Social Care.

My experience of being a Digital Skills Mentor has been a good one. It has given me an insight in to the different ways of teaching. Having taken part in the same module last year, I think using Scale Up with the MAC computers has given the module a more interesting and interactive perspective, making it more enjoyable for the students in learning the module.

However, the Scale Up project hasn’t come without its problems. At first, the students weren’t very confident with using the MACs, as most of them had never used one before so it took time to get used to learning in this way, and using a different operating system to Windows. By the end of the first term however, the students have been much more confident in using the MACs and haven’t needed as much support in finding their way around one, for example knowing the keyboard shortcuts for copy and paste and how to use the mouse.

Also, the NOW system, for the students, took a lot of getting used to especially finding the resources for the sessions such as Padlet and the discussion boards. The class size has seemed quite big to teach for the lecturers and having smaller class sizes would maybe be a benefit but it would be difficult to fit that many seminars into one week of teaching.

However, I think having two mentors in the classroom for students has been helpful to them. Even though at first the students seemed to be quite wary of us being in the classroom, it didn’t take long for them to get used to the idea and were soon asking us for help as well as the lecturer. It has offered them help from people who have experienced and completed the module before so have an idea of what should be happening and how the tasks should be completed. It also offers them a way of getting help from someone who may know how to explain a task in a simpler way from how the lecturer may have explained it for them, to get a better understanding of what to do. Also, another benefit for the students has been that they have been able to ask us questions about second year and our experience of first year generally. Even though that’s not our reason to be in the classroom, I think the students have found it helpful being told from someone who has been through first year what it will be like and how different second year may or may not be.