Building student support for computing students: How do students respond to different models?

Over the last two years in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, we have implemented a new approach to student support for our undergraduate and masters students, integrating new approaches to practical support and well-being with a range of co- and extra-curricula events, designed to help computing students develop more completely as future employees and citizens. In this paper, we outline the new approach, comparing it with our traditional approach to student support in our department, and consider how successful this switch has been through interviews with twenty-six students. Our research indicates that the key things that students value in student support are reliability and consistency, and that whilst engaging computing students in non-core activities is challenging, there are approaches that can help - in particular, being very specific how students will benefit through attending and allowing flexibility in routes to engagement.