Building working relationships with peers: an induction activity for students

Abstract

The initial period of transition to university (‘induction’) is important as this is when students first meet university staff and are introduced to university systems. Students also meet each other for the first time and start to form friendship groups which will provide a source of peer support throughout their programmes. This case study sets out an activity which we use with the new students on our extended accounting- and finance- related programmes to introduce students to library resources and enable them to start to build working relationships with their peers. The activity begins with information about the library from an Academic Services Librarian, delivered using an interactive quiz format. Students then work in small groups using the library PCs straight away which enables students to start to build friendships and work independently. The final part of the activity includes group presentations to the whole class.