Digital mentoring : reimaging mentoring in an ODL context

Abstract

The concept and practice of mentoring has survived for thousands of years from very ancient communities into the twenty-first century. Unisa needs to use mentors to support students not only because it is a good idea, but because the institution is obliged to make sure that it provides expert, informed and good quality mentoring for student teachers to meet the expectations and requirements of the Department of Higher Education. The question before us is: Is there still a place for personal face-to-face mentoring in an open, digital educational context where students can access the internet and social media to get support, guidance and answers to “all” their questions and needs? In other words, should we digitise mentoring and get rid of the human mentors? Research on mentoring by the author is underway. The preliminary findings have led to the development of a mentoring model which is (partially) digitised and which is more suitable to ODL contexts. The findings and the proposed model will be discussed in the presentation.