In recent years, a growing number of students are entering Higher Education in Ireland through alternative entry pathways (Keane, 2013). Consequently, institutions must now meet the educational and holistic needs of an increasingly diverse student population.

It is the responsibility of higher education institutions to support students in developing the required study skills required to succeed at this level. The most effective way to enhance study skills is to embed them within the curriculum (Gibbs, 1994; Cottrell, 2001). However, if this is not a feasible option, an alternative delivery method must be developed, one which will engage students even if participation is voluntary.

In response to this need, the Centre for Academic Practice in SETU developed the Higher Education Learner Programme (HELP). This is an online Study Skills programme that was delivered through multiple platforms. Student input was acquired throughout, and elements of content were co-created with students. In this way, we built a programme that could be adapted based on student feedback and whereby students could see that they were part of a larger community with others who had tread the same path before them.

In this presentation, we will present our findings on the effectiveness of this approach.