Abstract
A university launched a peer mentoring program to help students
transition from school to undergraduate studies, focusing on social, cultural,
and scholarly aspects of their early university experience. The COVID-19
pandemic introduced new challenges for first-year students as teaching shifted
online, creating a virtual environment. Peer mentors adapted their strategies to
guide students effectively through this transition, despite having little prior
experience in virtual mentoring. This study uses a mixed-method approach,
combining statistical analysis with sentiment and topic modelling, to evaluate
pre- and post-pandemic mentoring experiences. It found that while mentees
often overlooked the challenges faced by mentors, the latter worked diligently
to adapt and support students during this transition. Peer mentors demonstrated
'evolving innovation' to ensure consistency for the students they mentored.