Abstract:

Orientation and tutoring activities are emerging as an excellent resource to improve the quality of teaching university, due in part to that the integration of the different components involved in the process of teaching-learning are in themselves stimulating components for this process.

Aware of this fact, the Head of Students at the School of Technology (SOT) of the University of Extremadura (UEx), coordinates a project that allows to implement all these actions included in the Student Orientation Process (SOP) of the School. Students who access for the first time to a degree in the School are oriented by peer mentoring manners which are being supported by the so-called “Accomplice Project". The main characteristic of this project is that the tutoring actions are led not only by teacher-tutors, but also by student-tutors of higher courses (they are the accomplices). The accomplices are 3rd and 4th grade students and even PhDs ones. They are involved as tutors of the new students and, at the same time, as accomplices of the teacher-tutors, achieving a link between them. After the coexistence in the School of both systems of mentoring, in this work we present how they have been implemented in detail.

This peer tutoring system has been developed over the past 4 years. Looking for the continuous improvement of this initiative and during the 2019/20 academic year, the SOP of the School has taken one step further. With the intention to respond to the great need for being integrated of foreign students from mobility (Erasmus, Erasmus+ and similar mobility programs) who come from other countries to study in in the SOT, the "Accomplice Incoming Project” (funded by the Guidance and Teacher Training Service) has been developed, working also under the peer-to-peer tutorial action model.

On the one hand, this activity, although with the added difficulty of the foreign language, shares some objectives with the accomplice project that has been developed in the School previously. These are:
-O1 It is developed through a peer tutoring system (incoming student and accomplice student) guided by a tutor teacher
-O2 Guide the new students (mentored students) through the academic, social and the administrative point of view along the University environment in general, and the SOT in particular.
-O3 Promote with the help of the accomplices, the academic and social integration of the new students in the university life.

On the other hand however, this initiative is characterized by the involvement of new actions directly related to the characteristics and needs of incoming students.

-O4 Provide incoming students enrolled in SOT of information and tools to facilitate their academic, administrative and personal independence along the University Campus, in the City, in the Region and in the Country. To develop this objective, professionals from the Municipal Institute of Youth of City have informed incoming students of various aspects such as: Erasmus meeting points, transportation service, financial aid, leisure activities, etc.

Keywords:

Peer mentoring, orientation, tutoring, incoming students.