More cooperation for guidance of first years and student who come from Vocational Education
- Social Work teachers are setting up a student coaching agency for the whole university where all peer guidance can come together.
- The agency wants to train student coaches and buddies starting the next academic year.
Windesheim wants to upscale the student guidance. Part of that is the expansion of projects in which senior students coach the first years and upcoming students. The Student Coaching Agency wants to cooperate with study programmes and support training courses for student coaches and buddies.
“At Health Care and Social Work we have already been working on the project student coaching for a few years, in which second years students help first year students with study skills and other questions about the study programme”, says Social Work teacher Jantine van Willigen, one of the project managers of the Coaching Agency. “Meanwhile other study programmes are involved with student coaching and we are going to work together with Law. As work progressed the idea arose to have Social Work offer coaching and expertise for the whole university and to also have Social Work students coach at other study programmes eventually. Since coaching is an important skill in our study programme.”
Social Work teacher Sabine Reinaardus thinks that every study programme has a need for some form of student buddies: “For students it feels like an added value if they can talk with their peers. It often helps if they hear that the ones before them ran into the same problems or had the same doubts.”
The last couple of months Van Willigen and Reinaardus set up a plan for a university wide student coaching agency, together with teachers Inge Post, Monica Bau Santos and Harmjan Westerveld. There, all forms of student coaching can come together. Van Willigen: “We are now in conversation with the Executive Board to see how we can shape the coaching, the agency and finance it using the quality funds.”
The idea is to also accommodate the pilots of project Skillscoach, in which students who come from Vocational Education receive coaching from Windesheim students. The Study Success Centre is also pleased with more cooperation, because student coaches have a signalling function, are approachable and can refer to the general student councillor for questions.
Reinaardus expects that the study programmes go their own way to assign ECs to students who want to coach. “I think that a student needs eight training sessions on average to be able to coach properly.” Van Willigen hopes that the coaching agency will receive a central place eventually. “For now we can be reached at coaching@windesheim.nl.” (EM)
