Page 9 - Demo

Introduction 9
mastered every instructional tool, or who are experimenting with a new approach, or who are encountering a problem not previously experienced. Such a mentoring service can greatly help a small instructional design, faculty development, and IT staff more effectively leverage their resources to provide a broader and deeper level of support, as well as more timely responses, to a greater number of faculty.
Characteristics of Effective Mentors and Mentees
There exists a solid body of literature (referred to throughout our book chapters) on mentoring that despite being based almost entirely on in- person teaching and learning still provides much reliable evidence and guidance that can be incorporated into establishing well-organized men- toring frameworks to support online and blended academic programs. In some studies on mentoring, specific characteristics of mentors and men- tees that promote effective and satisfying mentoring relationships have been identified, whether the mentoring relationships are faculty-faculty, faculty-student, or student-student dyads or groups. However, because mentoring can be seen as part of the mentee’s development, different needs come into play at different times, requiring one or more skills on the part of the mentor to be deployed at particular junctures in the relationship. As David Clutterbuck (Clutterbuck & Lane, 2005, as cited in Clutterbuck, 2005, p. 3) noted in his study of mentor and mentor competencies,
Defining mentor competencies is also complicated by the fact that all mentoring relationships are both situational and temporal in nature. Situational refers to the primary responsibility of the mentor to re- spond to the mentee’s need ... If there are different needs, it implies that there should be different responses. We can therefore infer that one of the generic competencies of a mentor is to be able to respond appropriately to the variety of needs ...
We can add to this observation that when the majority of mentoring takes place online, the competencies of a mentor and mentee in communicating online also come to the fore. We can build on some of the characteris- tics noted in the literature and add here the special qualities that may be needed to make these equally effective online. When selecting mentors, these qualities should be looked for as likely advantageous ones to foster a strong mentoring relationship. For mentees, a manual or guidelines elabo- rating on these essential behaviors and attitudes can help to make mentees more receptive and more aware of their own contribution to the success of the mentoring relationship.
Here are some of the attitudes and behaviors that are advantageous for an online mentoring relationship: