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Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 46 (2012) 5158 5162

WCES 2012

Analyzing online mentoring process and facilitation strategies

Myunghee Kang*, Young Ran Yoo, Young Park
Department of Educational Technology, Ewha Womans University, South Korea

Abstract Online mentoring has drawn attention from academia and industry due to its potential to nurture more effective communication between mentors and protgs. It has been an important task for mentoring managers to facilitate and support the activities of participants in online mentoring. In this research, we reviewed four representative mentoring programs available in South Korea and analyzed their typical processes. Based on a literature review and personal experiences working with the programs, four phases of the process were suggested. The study, then, attempts to design and propose effective strategies to facilitate mentoring activities for each phase. Five Easy-tostrategies such as Easy-to-join, Easy-to-find, Easy-to-mentor, Easy-to-share and Easy-tomake a virtuous circle were identified. These strategies are designed to support participants mainly to join a mentoring program, to facilitate online mentoring activities, to diffuse information and knowledge about effective mentoring activities, and to develop an inner network to support protgs as they become mentors. The plan for actual implementation is ongoing with 200 participants, and future mentors and protgs may benefit from these strategies once they are fully developed. 2012 2012Published Published by Elsevier Ltd. by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hseyin Uzunboylu
Keywords: Online mentoring, Facilitation strategies for mentorng

1. Introduction Mentoring is an in-depth relationship between a senior individual who is a mentor, and a lesser skilled protg with a goal of improving the latters own knowledge or taking advice. The benefits of mentoring include supporting ones academic or career success, and personal psycho -social development (Bierema & Merriam, 2002). Moreover, mentoring is one of the key methods to transfer ones intangible assets to the next generation, like know-how, skills, and the knowledge and wisdom of mentors. More specifically, mentoring provides some functions such as facilitating learning motivation, providing information, offering role models, emotional support, and helping one find a vision for life (Jung & Tak, 2005). As a result, mentoring programs are widely applied to many different organizations including industry and education. Depending on the goal of the mentoring program, its forms vary, and the roles of the mentor and expected results also differ. In industry, mentoring is used to nurture talent, support new employees adjusting to a new working environment, or support their career development. With an educational view, mentoring is applied to help protgs learning and career exploration through counseling and providing emotional support (Allen, Eby, & Lentz, 2006; Kim & Lee, 2007). Common features can be identified through the various applications of mentoring. First, mentoring is based on a personal relationship between a mentor and a protg. Second, it is a process-oriented program rather than a task- or result-oriented one like learning, coaching, and similar activities. Lastly, mentoring mutually enhances participants,

* Knag, Myunghee. Tel.: +82-11-390-2712 E-mail address: mhkang@ewha.ac.kr

1877-0428 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hseyin Uzunboylu doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.06.400

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not only unidirectionally supporting protgs. Prior studies show that a mentor herself also takes advantage of a mentoring program and shows higher satisfaction than a protg. Many online mentoring programs have been introduced since the early 2000s worldwide, including South Korea (Knouse, 2001; Ensher, Hwen, & Blanchard, 2003). Websites for online mentoring have been constructed and developed as a solution to overcome the limitations of time and space, and imbalance in the number of mentors and protgs (Kim, 2002). Online mentoring seems to provide many benefits. It not only nurtures new potential mentors and protgs, who feel uncomfortable in face-to-face mentoring, but also helps many people easily join a mentoring program (Kasworm & Londoner, 2000; Kim, 2002). Furthermore, the manager of an online mentoring program can collect the needed information and control the quality of mentoring more efficiently online. Meanwhile, there are also some challenges with developing a successful mentoring program. Searching for a right mentor and nurturing a relationship may be constantly challenging, and virtual intimacy could be difficult to achieve, particularly if two people have never met in person (Bierema & Merriam, 2002). To meet the goal of mentoring, the participants of a mentoring program need to possess more proactive attitudes and make more effort to maintain a beneficial relationship. Moreover, the mentor and the protg tend to stay in touch with each other through e-mail and SMS instead of accessing the mentoring website. If most of the participants of a mentoring program disregard the website, websites for online mentoring may be wasted, and the range of the administration of a mentoring program can be limited. Therefore, some strategies are needed to support the online mentoring activities. 2. Four Phases of Mentoring Systems including online services Some online mentoring programs in Korea include WomenNet, operated by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family since 2002, which is a mentoring portal site that aims to develop ICT literacy and career paths of women. In KAI-WISET (Korea Advanced Institute of Women In Science, Engineering, and Technology), an online mentoring program has been one of the main programs to cultivate the next generation of female scientists and engineers since 2004. KNOU (Korea National Open University) and HYCU (Hanyang Cyber University) have been supporting online mentoring programs since 2008 in order to support learning for students and to reduce undergraduate students dropout rates. To help potential protgs and mentors better understand what to expect and maximize the success of mentoring, Pieper (2004) suggests a six-phase mentoring cycle, Choosing a Mentor/Protg, Getting Acquainted, Setting Goals, Growing the Relationship, Ending the Relationship, and Evaluating the Relationship's Success. In this study, based on research experience as mentoring managers in KAI-WISET, we, the researchers modified the cycle by grouping some phases and adding preparation phases. As a result, four phases of a mentoring program based on online are identified, which are, Preparing, Matching, Being a Mentor and Ending a relationship, as shown in Table 1. First, in the Preparing phase, the participants for a mentoring program are recruited. Any person who desired to be a mentor or a protg, and meets the conditions of a mentoring program can apply for it. The participants are selected and given a notice that they are members of the mentoring program. Second, the Matching phase takes a relatively short time, however, the success of the mentoring often depends on how to match a protg to a mentor. The quote, "Don't ever begin a mentorship if you can't be a good mentor to that person," shows the importance of matching in mentoring (Pieper, 2004). During this phase, protgs search for their mentors according to their particular concern or field, and requests a particular mentor. After making the request, the mentor should determine whether the request is accepted or not. According to prior research, it is crucial for its success that participants take an active part in the matching process (Allen, et al., 2006). If a protg cannot find a proper mentor, computer-generated automatic and manual matching operated by a computer information system may support the process. There are many considerable factors in matching (Earl, Mack, & Southern, 2004; Jin & Park, 2008). For example, the WISE online mentoring program considers an academic major as the most important matching element and KNOUs online mentoring program considers an academic major as well as the residential contiguity. Third, during the Be a mentor phase, mentoring activity is processed. It is a body of the program. Before beginning mentoring in earnest, an offline or online orientation for participants is essential. Orientation helps

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learners start off on the right foot with mentoring. Moreover, contracting a mentoring agreement is needed to confirm the the direction of mentoring of matched mentor and protg. A mentoring agreement is another key for successful mentoring, which engages the mentor and the protg in the mentoring process. Through a mentoring agreement, they determine the area and depth of the mentoring, so that it would be responsible and efficient mentoring. An online mentoring system should provide a private communication space for the mentor and the protg. In the last phase, Ending the relationship, participants submit a report that shows the progress of the mentoring activities. Lastly a mentoring manager evaluates the mentoring program. Reports and surveys collected before finishing the mentoring program are also considered important because they provide basic information to figure out the outcome of the program and to gather feedback (WISE, 2010; Kweon, Son & Kim, 2010; Lee & Lim, 2010). Furthermore, evaluated results can serve as feedback to support the next mentoring program.
Table 1. Main Functions of each Phases of Mentoring Programs Stages Preparing Functions Recruiting participants Applying mentoring program Selecting participants and giving notice Searching mentor for protgs and making a request Accepting a member as a protg Automatic matching Matching by mentoring coordinator Orientation for mentors and protgs Setting a mentoring agreement Communicating Providing Information Conducting report Evaluation Online / Offline Both Online Offline Online Online Online Both Both Both Both Online Online Online

Matching

Be mentoring

Ending relationships

Table 1 shows main functions of each phases of a mentoring program. In this research, because we deal with a mentoring program supporting online mentoring, classifying the functions for online, offline, or both are needed. Although online mentoring is efficient to overcome the restriction of time and space, it is difficult to form a rapport between a mentor and a protg. Therefore, achieving a goal of a mentoring program depends on how actively the mentor and protg make an effort to find a mutual communication topic and maintain the relationship (Sproull & Keisler, 1986). For this reason, facilitating strategies are needed to facilitate the online mentoring. 3. Facilitating Strategies for Online Mentoring Systems In this paper, we propose the 5 Easy-to strategies to promote online mentoring as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. 5 Easy-to Strategies

First, Easy-to-join is an entrance strategy to help one easily joins a program. Traditional mentoring is based on an individual relationship between a mentor and a protg, however, people these days are burdened with establishing a personal relationship with another person they do not know well. Therefore, it is helpful to reduce the burden by

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providing various forms of mentoring, such as group mentoring, peer mentoring, and open-mentoring as well as individual 1:1 mentoring (Ritchie & Genoni, 1999). Second, Easy-to-find is an intelligent strategy that provides a matching algorithm which a mentoring manager uses for matching. When a protg wants to find a mentor who may help him or her, an IT system can show a list of proper mentors based on speculative data of the protg. Another method is that various mentoring factors can be considered according to the purpose of the mentoring program (Earl, Mack, & Southern, 2004). To computerize a full matching process, a matching index consisting of matching factors with their weight is recommended. Third, Easy-to-mentor is a catalyst strategy that provides greater accessibility to an online mentoring site and activates mentoring. Before beginning mentoring, an orientation or workshop is recommended to inform participants of the value of mentoring, to help them find their mentoring goal, and introduce ways to mentor others. Kang and et al. (2008) reported that learning motivation such as goal orientation, task value, attribution, and the level of selfefficacy significantly predicts achievement in a web-based learning environment. In mentoring, we assume that this preparation activity is related to the achievement of mentoring (Athanases et al., 2008; Kang et al., 2008). It is also necessary to send e-mail or SMS messages to mentoring participants because they easily tend to lose contact with each other during the mentoring period. Most of successful results depend on the protgs assertiveness (Kasprisina, et al., 2008). For this reason, it is very important for the protg to have a positive attitude. Moreover, to facilitate the online mentoring activities, it is useful to adopt a mileage service that credits points to participants who access the online mentoring system. From an IT systems view, if one has a plan to construct a new online mentoring system, a mobile application for online mentoring would make communication easy and convenient. In online mentoring, participants have to access the mentoring website to communicate with their partners, and it may be inconvenient since they are used to communicating via e-mail and SMS. As mobile applications are becoming increasingly common, participants can fully utilize mentoring services if mobile apps are used. Fourth, Easy-to-share is a diffusion strategy that creates knowledge consisting of mentoring information, and shares it with other mentors, protgs and potential participants (Pyeon et al., 2007). It is useful to link the information or knowledge to the SNSs, such as Twitter or Facebook, to spread the knowledge, and it makes the website more accessible. Opened and sharable online systems have a greater effect on a community. Lastly, Easy-to-make a virtuous circle is a nurturing strategy that makes a virtuous circle in an organization. It provides a foundation for the growth of both mentors and protgs in the community, which is a human network with cohesion according to their major, work field, interests, etc. It is valuable to make a virtuous circle by training a protg to be a mentor for a community or an organization in the future. This supports the mentoring to be not just a one-time event, but a sustainable system. It is useful for nonprofit organizations or the education field. Table 2 shows the 5 Easy-to strategies, methods and their description for each strategy, and existing applied mentoring sites.
Table2. Activation method of online mentoring system based on 5 Easy-to strategies Strategy Easy-to-join Easy-to-find Intelligent-matching algorithm Online mentoring workshop Easy-to-mentor Periodic sending of mentoring information Mileage service Providing Apps for mobile phones Easy-to-share Easy-to-make a virtuous circle Extraction mentoring knowledge Networking with the community Methods Various mentoring types Mentor recommendation Description Providing various types of mentoring to help potential mentors and protgs easily participate in mentoring Recommend a proper mentor according to protgs requirements Applying matching functions using matching algorithms for unmatched potential mentors and protgs Introducing mentoring and the entire process, etiquette of mentoring, and presenting the best mentoring cases Periodically sending e-mails including information and activity guides about mentoring Operating a mileage service based on the amount of activity in an online mentoring site Providing Apps for mobile phones to make communication between a mentor and a protg easy and convenient Extracting mentoring information and making knowledge Supporting communities among participants based on their majors or interests to construct human networks Applied Sites KNOU, KAI-WISET KNOU, KAI-WISET KAI-WISET KAI-WISET KAI-WISET, KNOU, HYCU KAI-WISET

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4. Discussion In this paper, we analyzed the online mentoring process, then identified the phases of a mentoring program supporting online mentoring, and functions for each phase. Online mentoring is efficient in that it facilitates communication and enhances social networks; however, online mentoring has difficulties with psychological support and partnership formation. The 5 Easy-to strategies suggested could maximize the accessibility, openness, participation, and human networks. By mitigating the inconvenience of online mentoring and reducing the distance between a mentor and a protg (Bierema & Merriam, 2002; Jo & Yang, 2010), they make better use of online mentoring. Moreover, by adapting these strategies, the mentoring knowledge can be easily accumulated, shared and spread. It also helps the mutual development of protgs in the organization by creating a social and organizational network among mentoring participants so that they can create social capital in an organization. Although this strategy is now in the beginning stage of application, it is now being tested empirically in the field. Furthermore, more various active endeavors are needed to facilitate online mentoring, improve mentoring outcomes, and increase the satisfaction of participants in addition to these strategies and designs because mentoring is a valuable tool of informal instruction. References
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