Mentor's Role

The curriculum is student-centered; the course instructor is a "mentor" rather than a "teacher." The distinction between the two is important: A mentor's role is to guide students toward independent learning in a joint effort to help students reach their personal goals. Of course, the instructor's knowledge and experience are vital to the success of the curriculum. The more familiar the instructor is with learning goals, content, course design, and online mentoring, the better he or she will be at helping students solve problems independently.

The overall goal of this type of instructional design is to create independent learners. The ability to problem-solve independently is critical to success in the field of information technology. An effective IT professional knows how handle multiple tasks and a variety of people, and must be able to communicate information accurately and professionally.

To help students acquire these skills, when mentoring students, rather than providing students with the actual solutions to problems, instead provide students with strategies for arriving at solutions on their own, that they can use again when face with similar problems on the job.

Make students aware of the strategies they are using; ask them questions instead of providing them with answers. For example, when a student says “I don’t know what to do,” instead of telling him or her what to do, ask the following types of questions: “What have you tried so far? What happened? Why didn’t your strategy work? How could you modify it to make it work? Where might you be able to find an answer to this problem?”

Try to get students to arrive at their solutions independently, and to develop strategies for problem-solving, as they will have to do to succeed on the job. Only when you see that a student is unable to work through a problem on his/her own should you step in. At that point, provide a strategy for solving the problem the student is working on, as opposed to the problem solution itself. Or tell a story about a similar situation, to provide students with an example of a problem-solving approach.

Additionally, rather than telling students what information they may need to solve a problem up front, let students first attempt to work on a task and come to you with questions before you provide them with information. Framing questions and problems is a critical skill. It is important that students learn to identify and gather the information they need to solve a problem, rather than having this information provided to them up front.

The following are your responsibilities as a mentor in this course

• Read through the course materials, which include the materials on the course website, the mentor guides for each task, and the student orientation. When reading through each task, think about how you would perform the task if you were asked to. Jot down the steps you would take. They will help you provide advice to students during the course.
• When reading through the course materials, identify any areas where you may need to rely on the expertise of others to mentor students and evaluate student work. Contact experts prior to the beginning of the course. Ideally you can introduce these experts to the students during the orientation. These experts need not come into the classroom. They can work remotely, answering student questions and evaluating student work via email or phone.
• Identify a “counselor,” who is willing to help student groups work through any problems they experience when working collaboratively. Introduce the students to this counselor during orientation, describe his or her role, set up a communication protocol, and explain that the counselor is a neutral party, not involved in grading anyway.
• Read the papers on mentoring, included in this online manual under Suggested Readings. They offer more detailed advice on the skills required for mentoring this type of course.
• Provide students with an orientation, using the orientation materials provided. During this orientation, students should be broken into student teams of 3-5 students.
• Establish regular class meetings times, during which you answer student questions, listen and give feedback on student presentations, facilitate reflection sessions, and facilitate any of the complementary activities described in the task mentor guides that you feel would help your students.
• Establish guidelines for working remotely. When students work online, they can ask questions, submit work, and receive feedback through the online collaboration tools. At the beginning of the first session, you should establish online hours, like office hours, during which the students can communicate with you in real time.
• Assess student work and performance. Students submit work via email. Ideally, feedback on written assignments is return within 48 hours, but this time frame may be reduced or extended depending on the number of students and the time needed to respond to feedback. Each task is accompanied by a scoring rubric designed to reflect the areas of achievement highlighted in the support materials online. You can use these rubrics to help you evaluate student work. Also, 360-degree evaluation forms are provided to help students to evaluate themselves and their teammates. The 360-degree evaluation forms can provide you with useful information when evaluating overall student performance.