We, OIC SSP Peer Supporters, held “Let's Study Together! Online Study Room” on July 13 (Thursday), 14 (Friday), 19 (Wednesday), and 20 (Thursday), 2023.
The Online Study Room was open to students (undergraduate and graduate students) from all campuses of Ritsumeikan University, and was conducted in both English and Japanese. It was held online via Zoom so that even non-OIC students could easily participate from anywhere, including their homes!
The purpose of this event was to support students so that they could focus on their studies for the final exams and final reports. Another goal was to help students maintain their motivation by providing a good balance between studying and taking a break.
During the self-study time, we, SSP Peer Supporters, studied together with the participants. This was because we thought that by studying together, the participants would feel like they were working hard with other students, which would make it easier for them to focus than when they were working alone! Also, each time the moderator would say, "I will do this assignment today!" so that the participants could visualize more concretely the feeling of working together. We believe this helped the participants to focus on the assignments together!
Furthermore, at this event, a handout "How SSP Peer Supporters Spend Summer Vacation", which summarized the experiences of OIC's SSP Peer Supporters during summer vacation, was distributed in advance as a special benefit to participants in time for the start of summer vacation!
This handout introduces the experiences of Peer Supporters by the following items.
(1) A series of things you can start right away
(2) A series of things you can do to prepare for the fall semester
(3) A series of things we recommend for next year’s summer vacation
We have included many stories about our experiences in qualifications, part-time jobs, job hunting, volunteer activities, travel, etc. We hope that participants could find some tips to have a fulfilling summer vacation. This handout was also made available in early August on the "Learning Ideas and Tips from Students” > “SSP Peer Supporter Learning Ideas and Tips“ section of the SSP website, so please check it out!
This event has been held regularly since AY2020, and we hope that we can continue to hold it as a regular event in the future, as some of the participants in the survey said that they had attended this event before and participated again this time because it provided an environment where they could concentrate on their studies. Also, according to the survey, the average score for the question, "Did participating in this event allow you to concentrate on your study more than usual?" was 4.27 out of 5 points, and the average score for the question, "Did participating in this event increase your motivation?" was 4.18 out of 5 points. All of these scores were high, indicating that the event helped participants to focus and become more motivated.
We had many rehearsals and discussions in creating this event. During the rehearsal, we found many areas that we had not yet fully considered, and we continued to make further revisions. Moreover, by regular discussing the event with other Peer Supporters, we discovered points for improvement and new issues, and went through trial-and-error process to find ways to make the event even better. This time, in particular, many of the members of the planning section, which mainly manages events, were new to the section or new Peer Supporters who joined this year. Many of the other members were also new to their sections, and most of them needed to handle unfamiliar tasks. Even in such a situation, I saw junior members doing their best to complete their tasks in their own way, which encouraged me to act as a senior member to support them. Under such circumstances, there were many troubles, but in the end, we were able to make the event highly satisfactory for the participants, which made us strongly feel the significance of working as Peer Supporters. In this way, we, as Peer Supporters have also grown, and felt that the event was very meaningful for both the participants and us!
SSP plans to hold more events in the future to help enrich student life! We will continue distribute information on the SSP website, manaba+R and X (former Twitter) which we are sure will be useful for everyone! Let's continue to actively participate in SSP seminars and events and lead a better university life together!