Building A Peer Mentorship Program at Your School: How to Get Started
An online, peer-to-peer mentorship program is a great way to counteract the stress and rigors associated with online university. Historically, peer mentorship programs are great for students transitioning from high school or community college into university life.
Now more than ever, every student deserves some extra support.
Fortunately, there are a diverse set of tools available for students to find their ideal mentors. No longer will students have to struggle going through college, let alone online university, on their own. Here are three awesome platforms to help you launch an effective peer-to-peer mentorship program at your university!
1. Glimpse
Speed mentoring events are a great first step towards pairing mentors and mentees. Glimpse, an application which rotates people through one-on-one, timed boxed calls, is the perfect platform to do just that!
Rather than relying on algorithms to match individuals, Glimpse forms authentic connections through online, video conversations. In fact, Glimpse has been successfully utilized in several speed mentoring events across different universities.
A start-up accelerator known as Audacity Labs used Glimpse to pair students within Duke University to create bonds over social entrepreneurship. The results were overwhelmingly positive.
According to one Duke student: “I really enjoyed getting to connect with students from other schools as well as students from Duke I did not know. Glimpse made the networking seamless.”
As an event host, you can set up custom questions and topics for your speed mentoring event. This feature greatly facilitates 1-on-1 conversations.
You should consider creating conversation topics such as inquiring about a person’s mindset towards work values. Another possibility is to ask what each other’s interests are. These are some effective ways to cut through any initial awkwardness as well as determine if you align with the other person.
Through Glimpse, individuals — not algorithms — decide if someone is a suitable fit for them.
Click here to find out more.
2. Qooper
Qooper is a mentoring platform providing solutions for companies, universities, and associations. Essentially, Qooper helps streamline the mentorship process through automating mentoring and training programs.
Their platform pairs individuals by collecting data from questionnaires and profiles. Then, Qooper deploys their own matching algorithm to determine who will best correspond with you. Ultimately, you will have to see for yourself if their pricing model matches your mentorship program needs.
According to their website, you can select different program templates from new hire/buddy initiatives to student peer mentoring programs.
Currently, Qooper’s presence can be felt in the following schools: California-Lutheran University, Tulane University, California State University-Long Branch, University of Portsmouth, and Stevens University.
Qooper also offers helpful features such as scheduling and progress tracking and groups for topic-based discussions.
Click here to find out more.
3. Chronus
Chronus is another leading mentorship provider. Founded in 2007, Chronus’ mentorship software shares many of the same attributes as Qooper. They too are predicated on making enrollment, matching, guiding, and measuring within a mentorship program as easy as possible.
Through user inputs, Chronus utilizes their “MatchIQ” algorithm to find the best possible mentor-mentee matches. From there, users have the ability to create a guided experience for keeping participants productive and on-track.
Additionally, Chronus has their own methods to track progress as well as the ability to assess the program’s overall effectiveness.
Chronus received positive feedback from certain institutions such as Leeds Business School at the University of Colorado Boulder. According to the following case study, Leeds Business School created “an entire pipeline of mentoring from students to professionals” through Chronus.
Because of Chronus, Leeds has been able to implement four robust mentorship programs:
- Peer2Peer (P2P) program which supports first-year students with peer mentors
- Young Alumni Mentors (YAM) program that connects sophomores with recent graduates
- Professional Mentorship (PMP) Program which partners undergraduates and MBAs with seasoned professionals.
- CoLab program as a one-time first year student experience
Chronus is currently featured in RMIT University, University of Washington, and Ohio State University as well.
Click here to find out more.
By implementing either of these platforms, you will be setting up your university peer mentorship program for success!
