On October 11, lecturers of the Department of Foreign Languages and students of the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences got acquainted with the systems of tutoring and mentoring.
Such information they received at the international workshop Development of tutoring and mentoring in a modern university. So, in German realities, tutors are senior students who help younger students in the learning process, and mentors are students or employees of an education institution who specialize in psychological and organizational work with students.
The event was organized by the Head of the Department of Foreign Languages Professor Nataliia Mukan and the lecturer of the Department of Psychology, Pedagogics and Social Management of the Institute of Jurisprudence and Psychology Oksana Ivanytska, who is currently investigating the German experience of implementing these systems to use them in Ukrainian universities, in particular in Lviv Polytechnic.
– The new law on higher education envisages such an innovation, but the models of its implementation have not been developed yet. The United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany are countries where tutoring and mentoring are implemented at the highest level. For a long time there have been courses for training such specialists and improving their qualifications. We have invited Meike Hölscher, a colleague from University of Applied Sciences in Gießen, Germany, which is a partner of Lviv Polytechnic. It is very important for us to learn from their experience, because our university is also technical, so these models can be very useful for us, said Oksana Ivanytska.
Ms. Hölscher is the coordinator of the tutoring program. She organized topic trainings for student to determine if they could become potential specialists in this system. Through the tests it was found out that many students are ready to help others, and they have well-developed communicative skills. Participants of the seminar unanimously stated that the help of senior students would be useful for them in solving various problems.
Tutoring and mentoring directly affect the quality of education, provide students with comfortable learning environment, and help to avoid various problems, which can have especially the freshmen. It is also very useful in terms of academic mobility, as it helps newcomers to adapt to unusual educational and cultural environments.
