Supporting mature students in transition using pre-arrival platforms

In Chapter 10, Steve Russell focuses on the use of pre-arrival platforms to aid transitions for an often-overlooked group of students, mature students. These students often come with non-traditional qualifications such Access to HE or through foundation year programmes. This chapter will look at sharing best practice in transition support for these students and try and address where HE institutes can best support these students. Mature students often have competing identities such as parent, employee and carer, and this chapter will look to examine how best we can support them to transition into and through their degrees using the pre-arrival platform and on to successful completion. At Aston University, we have a majority of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) students often from Widening Participation backgrounds such as first-in-family university students, and this chapter looks to address some of their issues as the transition into the degree.