Student Experience Conference

The UHI Millennium Institute Student Experience Conference will be held on 9-10 May 2011 at the New Drumossie Hotel, Inverness. Sessions will include invited speakers and parallel presentations and workshops. Presentations and/or workshops are invited on the following Conference Themes: Technology in Careers Guidance, Career Coaching, Student Mentoring, Student Retention. UHI Student Experience Conference 2011.
Technology in Careers Guidance
E-guidance, instant messaging, discussion boards, text-services, video and audio resources - the potentials provided by new technologies in the Careers Guidance setting are boundless. Careers Services in Higher Education settings are increasingly using different forms of technology to market services to students, and to deliver guidance interventions. Presentations and workshops are sought on the broad topic of the use of technology within careers guidance, with a particular focus on good practice case studies and examples of innovative work.
Career Coaching
Career Coaching is a methodology that is gaining increasing momentum within careers guidance as a profession. Coaching provides the means of working with a student in a client-centred way, emphasising the personal resourcefulness of a student, and as such appeals to many careers practitioners. Career Coaching can be used in a variety of ways and papers are sought from Higher Education Careers Services on their experiences of using coaching methodologies in the delivery of Careers Guidance.
Student Mentoring
The UHI student mentor network has been run as a pilot during the 2010/11 academic year. The network has been designed to be flexible enough to be adaptable to various settings such as online, international students, and those in learning centres. The lessons learned from the pilot year will be disseminated at the conference. We welcome contributions from those with experience of running or researching peer-to-peer mentoring in Higher Education.
Student Retention
Student retention refers to the extent to which learners remain within a Higher Education institution and complete a programme within a specified period of time. Evidence suggests that non-traditional learners such as mature students, distance learners, part-time students and returners to education are more likely to withdraw than their traditional counterparts. UHI as a widening participation institution has developed a number of initiatives to support non-traditional learners to help them complete their courses successfully and these will be reported on at the conference. We welcome other papers on topics concerning both the causes of student attrition and initiatives to improve student retention.