Capstone Project: Evaluation of the Peer Mentorship Program at Georgian College

Roles

Data Analysis, Survey Design

Duration

Oct 2019 - Apr 2020

Overview

This project was performed as a part of my capstone project during my time in the Research Analyst program at Georgian College. Myself, and a team of 3 other students, were tasked with formation and evaluation of a peer mentorship program run by the computer studies department at the college to help international students adjust to life in a new country.

The project was intended to be a two stage process:

  1. The first stage was to be performed over the course of the fall semester, and determined if the student population in the program desired such a program

  2. The second stage was an evaluation, to see how effective the program is in helping students. As well as to gain critical feedback that the program could then use to iterate and improve the program in the

Research

Literature Review

To better inform ourselves, and to allow us to create targeted survey questions we can use to gain the most amount of data, we first started off with reviewing previous studies on the benefits of peer-mentorship programs. The following points are key findings we’ve gained from our research

  • Allows students to obtain positive sociocultural and psychological adaptation to their new environment

  • Can help students stay in programs, increase academic performance and graduation rates

  • Benefits to both parties, mentors gain their own skills when they have time to practice and present in front of a group while mentees gain skills and a support group

Study Design

For this project, the team has opted to use a mixed-methods approach to evaluate the program, using two types of methodologies to collected data; qualitative through interview with the peer mentors and quantitative through survey distributed to potential mentees. The survey, using background information from our literature review, was designed to understand the need for this program from the student population and to tailor the program to better suit the needs of those students. We were interest in gaining insight into the following:

  • Demographic questions (country of origin, gender, and year of study)

  • Preferred times

  • Level of interest in the program

  • Major topics they would like covered

Interviews were also conducted with the peer mentors to gain greater insight into their thoughts and opinions regarding the program, and how the participation may have developed their skills.

Data and Analysis

Survey Results

The results of the survey allowed us to get a general idea on the demographics of the population. The majority of the population are male students in their first year of study in the Computer Programming program, coming from India, and have not studied in Canada prior to the 2019-2020 academic year. They would be likely to participate in a program like this and would like topics like life skills, learning how to establish yourself in a new country, and finding part-time employment to be approached during mentorship sessions. Ideally this student would like to see sessions run around Wednesday afternoon and evenings, Thursday afternoons, and Saturday afternoons.

Figure 1: Distribution of topics that students would most like to see approached during peer mentoring sessions

Figure 2: Perceived helpfulness of the program reported by respondents

Figure 3: Further breakdown of the perceived helpfulness by students who have (blue) and who have not (green) studied in Canada prior to the start of the academic year

Interview Data

Through interviews with the peer mentors, insight was gained regarding how each mentor, discovered the program, why they wanted to become a peer mentor, and how they felt regarding the current state of the program. As the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the closure of campus and placed a limit on the number of people who could gather in one place, the mentoring sessions were moved online with the help of the department. As such, we planed to ask the peer mentors how they felt about the move online and the support received. Overall, both feel that this program would have been useful to them in their first year of study. but when it comes to remote or in-person sessions, the opinions were split - one feels that the in-person sessions would be better as it allows for more one-on-one teaching and guidance while the other mentor feels that being online allows shy students to not feel awkward asking their questions and allows for more ease in directing students to online resources. Overall, the most common type of question the mentors receive are regarding co-op, but there were a surprising lack of questions focused around part-time employment and finding accommodations.

Limitations

Over the course of the study, we’ve encountered numerous limitations. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the scope of this project has shifted significantly from what was originally planned and has placed limited on the data collected, as in-person meetings were placed on hold for the foreseeable future. We were unable to gain insight regarding the feelings towards the program on the side of the mentees and was thus not able to provide feedback on the effectiveness of the program.

Conclusions

Recommendations

Based on the collected survey and interview data, we’re able to recommend the following:

  • Continue the study in the following year to determine how truly effective the program is and continue to support the study to see how it can improve and what benefits it can offer

  • As a larger proportion of respondents were not in their first year of study, offer the program to students in upper years as well.

  • To see the greatest amount of student involvement, aim to run around Wednesday afternoon and evenings, Thursday afternoons, and Saturday afternoons

  • Consider approaching topics like life skills, learning how to establish yourself in a new country, and finding part-time employment and have the mentors be prepared to answer questions about coursework

Future Research

  • Running an additional study in the following academic year would provide data from a new cohort and may provide insights that the data collected here may not uncover

  • Due to setbacks and delays, the skills that are reported to have improved in the literature were not seen here, and is an area that future studies can investigate

  • Peer-mentor opinions diverge on whether online sessions are better or not, an additional study to see how students feel about running sessions online compared to in-person would be an excellent topic to approach

If you have any questions or would like to view a copy of the full report, please contact me via e-mail at ly_stephen@outlook.com