Page 7 - Demo

Introduction 7
Studies, New York University, shared how mentors and mentees inter- act in the NYU SPS Violet Network Mentor Program: “The format of meetings is entirely at the discretion of the mentor and mentee. They can choose phone, zoom, skype, text or in person to name a few!”
While some online mentoring programs might have provision for in-person meetings, in cases when in-person interactions are underuti- lized, then the in-person interactions may eventually be eliminated or dissolved on their own. Kristen Wilke reflected on this situation:
When we started out, we had in-person office hours, so online men- tors took shifts in the office to be available for drop-ins or if a student [mentee] was having issues and wanted to come in and meet with someone face-to-face or bring in their laptop and work with a mentor through something.
Frankly, we just did not have that many students [mentees] who wanted to do that. Usually, online students want to do things online. There are occasionally students who request an in-person meeting, but there is not a huge demand for that. This semester we are com- pletely virtual. We don’t have those in-person office hours and there has not been a demand for that.
Even for our own unit’s support for peer mentors, we used to meet once a week in person to talk through the issues that students [men- tees] were encountering, discuss how mentors assisted with solv- ing those, in order for the mentors to support each other in their online course mentor (OCM) role. With the pandemic, we moved everything online, even these weekly meetings for the mentors, and it honestly hasn’t changed anything.
While some online mentoring programs were originally established to address the needs of online students enrolled in fully online programs, the aftereffect of the COVID pandemic has led institutions to open up their mentoring services to multiple modalities such as online or hybrid in ad- dition to in-person offerings, to better meet the needs of students. Marisol Jimenez, Director of Instructional Support Services Program at Lehman College, shared:
Our academic coaching mentoring program began as a face-to-face program and transitioned to online during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the long term, given what we have learned in the last 18 months, the program will continue with both in-person and online components. Consequently, since transitioning to offer our mentoring coaching services online, we have enhanced our own work by being intentional about engaging learners online, using technologies to promote active learning online.