Brightside webinar highlights the growing role of mentoring in widening participation and supporting confident university decision-making.
Brightside’s latest webinar explored how online mentoring for widening participation is helping young people navigate increasingly complex university and career decisions. Bringing together university partners and widening participation professionals, the session highlighted the growing role of trusted mentoring in building confidence, widening access to guidance and supporting informed decision-making in an age of AI and information overload.
The webinar, Exploring WP solutions that support young people to make informed decisions, focused on the challenges currently shaping post-18 decision-making and the practical role mentoring can play in helping young people navigate an increasingly complex landscape.
Hosted by Brightside CEO John Craven, the session formed part of Brightside’s ongoing university webinar series, which explores effective approaches to designing and delivering mentoring programmes that widen access to higher education.
Over the course of the webinar, speakers reflected on the realities young people are facing today, from rapidly evolving career pathways and unequal access to guidance, to the growing impact of AI and information overload. Alongside this, the session showcased how online mentoring can provide trusted, personalised support that helps young people feel more informed, more confident and more optimistic about their futures.
Online Mentoring for Widening Participation in a Changing University Landscape
The webinar opened by recognising how dramatically the post-18 decision-making environment has changed in recent years.
Young people are now navigating more pathways than ever before. Traditional university routes sit alongside apprenticeships, degree apprenticeships, vocational qualifications, and rapidly changing employment markets shaped by technological change and AI-driven disruption.
While increased choice can create opportunity, it can also create uncertainty.
Speakers highlighted how many young people are being asked to make major life decisions within an environment that feels fast-moving, unpredictable and increasingly difficult to interpret. At the same time, access to high-quality guidance remains uneven, with students from disadvantaged backgrounds often less likely to benefit from strong networks, personalised advice or exposure to relatable role models
Young people today have access to more information than any previous generation, but volume does not always translate into clarity. Participants discussed how AI-generated content and online advice can often feel persuasive and immediate, while lacking the context, nuance and lived experience young people need to make genuinely informed choices.
Against this backdrop, the webinar focused on a key question for widening participation practitioners: what types of support genuinely help young people build confidence in their decisions?
Mentoring as a trusted and human solution
Throughout the session, mentoring emerged as a powerful response to these challenges.
Brightside shared that online mentoring creates safe, flexible, and accessible spaces where young people can explore their options openly with trained mentors who provide relatable, real-world insights.
Rather than offering one-size-fits-all advice, mentoring allows young people to ask questions, reflect on their aspirations and discuss uncertainties in a non-judgemental environment.
Speakers described how this type of support becomes increasingly valuable in a world where young people are often overwhelmed by information but still searching for a trusted human connection.
Helping young people navigate complexity
As pathways become more diverse and labour markets continue to evolve, young people need opportunities to explore different futures safely and confidently.
Brightside discussed how mentoring provides access to trusted role models who can share lived experience, encourage reflection and help mentees build confidence in their choices.
Through the Brightside platform, young people are matched with relatable mentors they can choose themselves. Conversations are personalised, supportive and grounded in real-world experience.
The impact of this support is already clear. According to Brightside’s 2025 impact report, 93% of surveyed mentees said mentoring helped them feel optimistic about the future.
Addressing unequal access to guidance
Another major focus of the webinar was the continuing inequality in access to careers guidance and networks.
For many young people, particularly those from underrepresented or disadvantaged backgrounds, access to high-quality advice is shaped heavily by geography, school resources and existing social networks.
Brightside explained how online mentoring helps remove some of these barriers by connecting young people with university students and professionals regardless of location.
Described during the session as providing “a mentor in their pocket”, the approach enables mentees to access insight, encouragement and guidance beyond their immediate environment.
The webinar also highlighted strong progression outcomes linked to mentoring participation. Brightside shared that 58% of Brightside mentees go on to access higher education, compared to a national average of 37%.
Why Online Mentoring for Widening Participation Matters in the Age of AI and Information Overload
One of the most timely discussions during the webinar centred on the growing influence of AI and online information.
While digital tools can widen access to information, speakers noted that young people still need support in interpreting what they read online and understanding how it applies to their individual circumstances.
Brightside positioned mentoring as an important counterbalance to information overload, not by replacing technology, but by adding trusted human context.
Mentors help young people turn information into insight through conversations grounded in lived experience, reassurance and honest reflection.
This emphasis on trust and authenticity resonated strongly throughout the session.
Brightside shared that 78% of surveyed mentees said mentoring influenced their decision-making about next steps.
Technology as a force for widening access
The webinar also explored the role technology can play in widening participation when designed thoughtfully and safely.
Brightside reflected on more than two decades of experience supporting young people and outlined how its online mentoring platform has evolved to combine accessibility, safeguarding and meaningful connection.
To date, Brightside has supported more than 160,000 young people and facilitated more than two million mentoring messages through its platform.
Speakers emphasised that technology alone is not the solution. Instead, impactful digital platforms are those that create opportunities for meaningful human interaction while remaining accessible, flexible and safe.
Three key themes emerged from the discussion around technology for good:
- Access – removing geographical barriers and making mentoring flexible and accessible.
- Connection – creating opportunities for meaningful conversations with relatable role models.
- Confidence – helping young people explore futures safely while building digital confidence.
Safeguarding also remained a key focus throughout the conversation, with Brightside highlighting its long-standing commitment to best-in-class safeguarding processes, including human moderation.
How Online Mentoring for Widening Participation Builds Confidence and Informed Decision-Making
Alongside the strategic discussion, the webinar included reflections that captured the personal impact mentoring can have on young people.
One mentee shared:
“You’ve really helped me to make those important decisions surrounding my post-18 options and more over the weeks gone by, so thank you for your advice and support. It has been great having you as my tutor and I hope you continue to do well in the future.”
The webinar also highlighted feedback from educators working directly with young people participating in mentoring programmes.
One school representative reflected:
“Seeing our pupils’ faces light up when they have found a mentor or suddenly have that light bulb moment about the possibilities they see in their futures is wonderful. Sometimes it’s like a big weight has been lifted off their shoulders as they can envisage a pathway for themselves.”
These moments reinforced a central theme running throughout the webinar: mentoring is not simply about information-sharing. It is about confidence, belonging, aspiration and helping young people feel that their futures are achievable.
University of Warwick case study: mentoring in practice
The webinar also featured a partner case study from the University of Warwick, presented by Eleanor Hinds, Widening Access Officer.
The session explored how mentoring forms a central part of Warwick Scholars, the university’s widening participation programme.
The programme combines multiple forms of support, including:
- Launch residentials
- Online mentoring
- Tutoring
- Webinar support on topics such as student finance and personal statements
- On-campus visits
Eleanor Hinds described mentoring as a “vital part” of the programme, providing dedicated one-to-one guidance and ensuring students have space to ask questions and access personalised support.
Importantly, the case study also provided an honest look at the practical challenges involved in delivering mentoring programmes effectively.
The University of Warwick reflected on several common issues that can arise in practice, including:
- Students feel unsure about what to ask mentors
- Concerns that one-to-one mentoring may feel awkward initially
- Students are forgetting how to access the platform
- Confusion between mentoring and other programme activities, such as tutoring
The webinar explored how these challenges were addressed collaboratively through practical solutions.
Responses included providing conversation starters for mentors and mentees, hosting in-person events to build rapport before mentoring begins, offering onboarding webinars to clearly explain the platform, and staggering programme elements to reduce confusion.
The case study demonstrated how thoughtful programme design and strong partnership working can help mentoring programmes remain engaging, accessible and impactful for students.
A continuing conversation across the sector
The webinar concluded with a strong sense that widening participation work is entering a new phase.
As young people navigate increasingly complex educational and career landscapes, universities and outreach providers continue to rethink how guidance, mentoring, and digital support can evolve to meet changing needs.
Throughout the discussion, one message remained consistent: young people still value a trusted human connection.
While technology and AI are reshaping how information is accessed, mentoring continues to offer something uniquely powerful: the opportunity for young people to speak openly, ask questions without judgment, and learn from someone who has walked a similar path.
Brightside closed the session by inviting attendees to continue the conversation through upcoming webinars, including a future platform demonstration exploring the Brightside mentoring platform in more detail.
For universities and organisations interested in widening participation, the webinar served as both a practical discussion and a reminder of the lasting value of meaningful human support in helping young people make informed decisions about their futures.
As the conversation around widening participation continues to evolve, one thing remains clear: young people benefit most from support that feels personal, trusted and genuinely human.
Brightside’s latest webinar reinforced the important role mentoring can play in helping students navigate complex decisions with greater confidence and clarity. You can download the full webinar presentation here and watch the webinar replay below to explore the discussion, insights and practical examples in more detail.
