Short films about a mentoring system built so that nobody meets the University alone. Start with the first one; after that, watch whichever part you actually need — including screen tours that walk through the real system as each role player sees it.
Everyone in this system is invented, and so is everything that has happened to them. The simulation was built to show two things: how the accompanying actually works — a mentor asking, a group answering, a meeting recorded, a concern raised and closed — and how the flag system behaves once it has a whole cohort to work on. It was not built to be a portrait of Stellenbosch, and it should not be read as one.
The simulated year runs from 2 February to early April 2027 — the first nine weeks of the academic year, which is where first-year mentoring does most of its work. Inside that window the meetings run right through, and “today”, as far as the system is concerned, is early April 2027. Everything after that date is empty because it has not happened yet, not because it is missing — the cycle itself runs to the end of November.
⛔ Everything is populated for 2027: the mentoring (meetings, attendance, the online rooms, the shelf, mentor-raised flags) and every instrument — the arrival survey (SUBSIFY), the Welcoming Survey, the questionnaires and the two interventions, plus academic marks. Each row of that data is a real submission in shape, keyed on the student number the same way a live one is. Three independent switches at admin → Overview turn each layer on or off — mentoring, the surveys/questionnaires/interventions, and the academic marks — so a demo can show or hide any of them. Showing/hiding never deletes anything.
The screen tours were recorded while only a subset of the communities had been populated, so the numbers on screen in them are much smaller than the ones you will meet here. The system you are about to walk into now carries the fuller picture — 6 554 first-years across all 44 residences and commuter student communities, which is the scale the real intake has. Where a film and a screen disagree about how many, the screen is the newer of the two.
What is real is the structure. The residences and commuter student communities, the clusters they sit in and the names they carry come from the University’s own register.
Twenty minutes for the three that matter most.
The whole system in one sitting — the three people it exists for, what it is and is not, the five things it does, and the four things it refuses to do.
The privacy question answered in full: four promises enforced in code, and why some things are shown to nobody at all.
Three different things get called “the survey”, and only two were ever asked of a first-year.
Everything BeWell measured is still measured — all thirteen reports — plus a great deal it could not do. For colleagues who remember the programme.
One film per part. Watch whichever you actually need.
What is on each person's screen and what they can do with it.
One meeting followed all the way through: planning, inviting, the register, what came up, how it went.
How the system notices something, who it tells, what they can do, and how it closes again.
Seventy-three worksheets, workbooks and activities — and why all of it is an offer.
A hundred and twenty-one rooms shaped like the institution itself.
The first of the two courses first-years work through: what it is, why the reading of stress changes the outcome, and what a report on it shows — as a community, never as a person.
The belonging intervention: the inference it corrects, why the writing rather than the reading is the mechanism, and why it says where a cohort stands rather than how far it has moved.
The Readiness tab: what mentor training attendance records, who may record it, the four outcomes, and why "no record" is never the same as "did not attend".
Real captures from the running system, one film per role player — plus how an intake gets in.
Seven real screens, in the order a first-year meets them.
A mentor's six working screens, from the group to the register.
The engine underneath the rooms, screen by screen — home, a space, a conversation, What's New, People, profiles, search and polls.
What it asks, how it is scheduled for every incoming first-year, and the report each residence, commuter community and cluster gets back automatically.
The anonymous survey that asks what the Welcoming Programme did — seven measures, and 62 reports generated across 70 environments.
The console — six tabs walked through, and the four they are refused.
The same nine tabs, plus the four that name a person.
Four screens, and the one view nobody inside a community has.
The six-step intake, every staff role, and how marks are uploaded.
For first-years: what this is, what it asks of you, and what stays private. Your screen, the shelf, the questionnaires, asking for help, and leaving if you need to.
How a 2027 intake is actually run — the five steps, and what each role player provides, does and receives.
The five steps of onboarding a year — you touch only the first two; the people do the rest, on their own screens, as they arrive.
The four leaders above every mentor — the coordinators and the Residence Heads: what each one provides, receives and does first.
Where the groups are actually built — on the head mentor's list and the mentor's own page, with each first-year's link issued the moment they are added.
Two kinds of first-year, both fully on the system — and the one difference, a mentoring group, which the unmentored can ask for.
The educational philosophy this is built on, and where the design came from.
An educational philosophy of student communities, drawn from three documents by Pieter Kloppers of the Centre for Student Life and Learning. His argument, in his order, in his own words.
How FlourishTalk answers the gap in Pieter Kloppers' philosophy — plus the programme, the daily quote and a personalised book for a community.
The programme behind the questions and the quotes — what a phase is, the choice between a category and a topic, the shape of a year, and who should be making these decisions. Watch the two films above it first; this one starts where they finish.
Three separate pieces of work that describe the same system.