An intervention strategy to support first year Engineering and Built Environment students through remote mentoring strategies

First year experience is a concern to Universities in Australia for a long time. This has presented itself forcefully in Engineering Faculties which have a high student attrition rate during the first year of study. Universities and Faculties have employed many strategies to try and address this “leakage” of students. Some of the approaches adopted include student mentoring, and various programmes which provide learning support for students. All of these initiatives have had successes but the question needs to be asked about the reaction of students to such support systems and networks. The University of Newcastle currently has a range of student support projects in operation. One introduced by the Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment will closely monitor a student’s progress and, at the first instance of problems arising, an intervention offering support and direction to students is initiated. This paper reports on the introduction of this system.