Recognising and rewarding the contribution and personal development of peer supporters at university

Abstract

It has long been recognised that students who participate in peer support programmes as peer supporters or mentors develop valuable skills and attributes while involved in the support of others. The University of New England, NSW, Australia, has recently introduced an award for extra‐curricular achievement of students while at university to support its graduate attributes policy. It is called the New England Award (NEA). This paper reports one set of outcomes of a wider study which examined how well the NEA, in its pilot period, met its broad objectives. It focuses on the impact of one type of NEA activity, community contribution, through an examination of what students gain by acting as peer supporters in terms of graduate attributes and the impact of the NEA on students' perceptions of those gains. Because of the small sample size, the results of this study may not be generalisable but the underlying notion of recognising and rewarding student development through acting as peer supporters is transferable. It appears that this type of activity is an effective means by which most graduate attributes and other desirable attitudes and personal qualities can be enhanced and that the NEA is a credible vehicle for institutional recognition of extra‐curricular achievement.

Keywords:

• peer support
• graduate attributes
• community contribution
• student development
• extra‐curricular activity

Notes

1. UNE has two quite different cohorts of students: on‐campus students, the majority of whom are full‐time and recent school leavers; and off‐campus students (the majority) studying by distance, most of whom are part‐time and mature students. The peer support programme described here targets the former cohort. There is a quite different peer support programme in place targeting the latter cohort which was not the subject of this study. The demographics of UNE's student body is typical for an Australian regional university but not for an Australian metropolitan university which has a higher majority of on‐campus students who study in both full‐ and part‐time modes.