Empowering students in transition: Peer mentoring to support first and final year students

This paper suggests a framework for empowering first and third year students as they transition into and out of undergraduate study. The Transition In, Transition Out (TiTo) program supports students using peer mentoring. TiTo is designed to build the five senses of student success described by Lizzio (2006): connectedness, capability, resourcefulness, culture and purpose and enhance productive learning approaches for both first year students and third year mentors. The TiTo model was implemented in the discipline of psychology at two Australian universities. It was embedded into the face-to-face curriculum at one university and offered as an option in a blended learning delivery at the other university. Results from a mixed-method evaluation support the effectiveness of TiTo. This paper describes the model and summarises the outcomes for first and third year students in the face-to-face program. The presentation will examine the challenges encountered during implementation and provide access to the resources developed as part of the project.