Supporting GEES undergraduates at Ulster through the use of Senior Student Tutor (SST) workshops

Undergraduate intake into the School of Environmental Sciences, Ulster comprises students studying honours degree programmes in environmental science, geography and marine science, and students following a two-year non-honours Associate Bachelors degree (ABD) in environmental studies. Longitudinal induction sees first year students interacting with studies advisers and senior student tutors (SSTs) in small group activities. The main aim of these workshops is to help level four students prepare for their end-of-semester, modular examinations. This case study outlines the organisation and rationale for this peer-mentoring scheme and determines its impact upon first year examination performance. Results reveal a positive causal relationship between workshop participation and subsequent success. It is argued that faculty suffering from student progression problems traceable to weaknesses in examination performance could benefit from adopting this locally controlled, low cost, small-scale, peer-mentoring model.