This project had two strands one around transition support for mentors (these were students), community building and early stage academic development and the other strand was around mentor support and academic development.

The session focused on the mentee support using a tried and tested model. This was time bound, voluntary enrolment and unpaid. The focus was on a student partnership approach from an evolving scheme. There was an extended pilot in 2014-15 which had 9 schools involved and the plan was to have mandatory roll out in 2015-2016. This involved a tricampus vision with one of these being international. Technology was therefore used to support this. All first year students in the schools would be mentored by the third year students. When this is rolled out there will be 30 schools involved. The focus was on training the mentors which had always been done face to face. This was not going to be practical and so blended learning was the chosen approach.

Students develop through the process of role modelling and so there was also encouragement on sharing practice with other mentors and asking questions. Sharing approaches to responding to questions was felt to be useful and reflecting on personal learning. There was encouragement to gain accreditation of the mentoring role through an optional award which had a reflection as the assessment. There was also a senior mentorship for leadership route which included sustainability and partnership.

The premise was that blended learning would create a better community than traditional face to face teaching or online only. Community building develops connectedness and peer support which then leads to growth. There were forums, guidebooks apps and a facebook. There were some issues around reflection with students not able to do this with no training and many not wanting to share. Some tools used for reflection can also be expensive and so only about 1/3^rd progressed to an award.