Get inspired, dream and reflect on your own student support system

by Lien Ampe and Nele Pierlet 

Content & format

In higher education, first year students meet academic and personal challenges. To overcome these challenges, every higher education institution develops its own support system to help and guide the students with their specific questions and needs. The main goal of the workshop is to empower the student support system of the participants’ institution, this by focusing on the needs and challenges of the students. To be specific, participants will exchange and compare different approaches of student support, by means of several student cases. The cases contain broad counseling questions that are situated in various fields, such as psychosocial problems, learning disabilities, language issues... Participants will be stimulated to think possible support systems over and ask critical questions about the support offer of other fellow participants. Taking all this into consideration, participants will have the possibility to dream and visualize their ideal student support system. This will be obtained by means of a creative approach. Furthermore, participants will get inspired by the presentation of our own student support system. This system focuses on academic as well as personal counselling. In fact, it is composed of three levels: a curricular level for every student, an extracurricular level for students with a specific or additional support question. And after referral, students can turn to a third level that consists of more intensive care. That being said, we hope all participants will go home with ideas and inspiration to adjust or build a suitable support system for the first year students enrolled in their institution. 

Learning outcomes

• Starting from several complex cases, participants exchange different approaches of student support which focuses on academic as well as personal counselling. 
• Participants will get inspired by the presentation of the  student support system of Artevelde University of Applied Sciences.  
• In the end participants evaluate, dream and visualize their own ideal student support system. 

About Lien Ampe and Nele Pierlet 

Nele Pierlet and Lien Ampe work for the Office of Study and Career Guidance at Artevelde University of Applied Sciences. They are both study and career counselors. Nele Pierlet focuses on diversity, equal opportunities and access to higher education. Lien Ampe is responsible for the institution’s policy on study coaching.