Student Engagement and Success
- Interactive Orientation
Meet your virtual guide, your classmates and learn about your course
As part of your UL orientation, you will have three scheduled sessions delivered by a Virtual Guide, who will be a friendly, approachable student from a later year on the same course as you and who can offer support and answer questions you may have as well as sharing their own experience in UL.
- What: Your guide will provide information about your course and help you understand what you need to get started here in UL (e.g. Understanding your timetable, meeting classmates, planning for assessments, time management, and the changes you can expect in your transition to University).
- When: The first two sessions will be scheduled during Orientation Week (20-24 Sept, 2021). The third session will be scheduled during your first week of classes.
- Where: These sessions will be run through the UL virtual learning environment which is called Sulis. Your Virtual Guide will meet you in the 'meetings' space on the site.
Meeting Classmates:
These sessions will also give you a chance to get to know other students on your course, share your experiences, build connections, and learn from one another.
- PASS
New UL students who are undertaking a full-time academic programme are assigned an academic advisor. The advisor is a member of academic staff, usually someone who teaches on your course.
- Student Leadership Initiative
The Student Leadership initiative was piloted in the University of Limerick in 2018/19. Represented in the graphic below are the key cohort representatives within this initiative, first year students, student leaders and academic mentors. The overarching aims of this initiative are to improve the academic culture and programme socialisation within an academic programme, while fostering a sense of belonging for new students.
The pilot was coordinated by the Student Engagement and Success Unit (personnel from the Centre for Transformative Learning and Student Affairs Division) in collaboration with the academic programme leader. Results and feedback from this pilot informed the expansion of the model to include a second academic programme in academic year 2019/20. Support from CSIS, and the Faculty of AHSS facilitated the roll-out of the Student Leadership initiative to two academic programmes in 2019/20. The Student Leadership Initiative continues to run within CSIS and AHSS, with the view to expanding the program into additional faculties going forward.