Abstract:

Since its release in 2008, the mentoring programme of the School of Engineering of Jaén (PAT-EPSJ) has guided and tutored an increasing number of undergraduate students enrolled in the different engineering degrees offered at the School, namely in computing, geomatics and topography and industrial engineering. The programme implements, but it is not limited to, different activities, such as workshops, guidelines courses, seminars and meetings, that are available to those students who are interested in at no cost. The main objective of the programme is to serve as an orientation tool for students demanding support, as a way to facilitate their integration into the academic context as well as to help in addressing any difficulty found during their studies or to prepare them to successfully start their future careers. In the last years, the programme has evolved to extend its reach and impact, thanks to the positive feedback information collected from the participants (students, lecturers, etc). Among many others, additional seminars of different topics of the students’ interest have been scheduled within the academic year, some of them delivered by senior year students, termed mentors, who officially participate in the programme and whose own experience-based point of view helps the students in better understanding and internalizing the matter considered. Moreover, the programme has been extended to include the mentoring of not only freshmen but also any year students. With regard to the feedback information, the main tool used in the mentoring programme is a set of surveys, offered to the mentored students at different stages of their academic year, namely at the beginning, at middle course, and at the end of the course. These surveys serve as a vehicle to analyze the students’ performance and academic progress, as well as to collect valuable information regarding improvements or weak points of the programme. As more students from different degrees and years are showing interest in participating in the programme, the number of surveys has increased and the information extracted has become more insightful, but their structure and analysis is more complex. In this work, we describe the process followed in the enhancement of these surveys, as a way to help not only the mentored students, but also the later analysis process, necessary for the subsequent improvement of the mentoring programme.

Keywords:

Mentoring programme, Tutorial plan, Undergraduate students, Student support, Feedback surveys.