E-Mentoring in Virtual Education.

Many U.S. and international educational institutions are beginning to embrace the idea of e-mentoring for virtual (on-line) students. These organizations are recognizing the immense benefits of e-mentoring. Bierema and Merriam (2002) noted that the Internet is being used as a mentoring venue where virtual mentoring has become increasingly useful as a knowledge age alternative to traditional mentoring. E-mentoring may also be used as a human resource development (HRD) intervention in this increasingly technology-based, knowledge society (Bierema & Hill, 2005). This paper is to explore e-mentoring and discuss the implications for education and human resource development. Mentoring is not a new idea. It goes back thousands of years to Homer’s epic poem, the Odyssey. Homer tells of a wise old sea captain named Mentor (the goddess Athena in disguise), who gives Odysseus’s son, Telemachus, guidance in coping with his father’s long absence since the Trojan War. O’Neill, Wagner, and Gomez (1996) noted that in modern times the word mentor has been used to refer to almost any kind of relationship in which a knowledgeable person aids a less knowledgeable person. Protege refers to the person who is the focus of the mentor’s efforts (Burgstahler & Cronheim, 2001). Knouse (2001) cited that similar to other Web ventures, e-mentoring is very new. As a discipline or body of knowledge, it has not yet evolved to the point where it is possible to critically evaluate its effectiveness. Knouse (2001) further noted that researchers should begin to examine basic questions regarding how well e-mentoring works, especially in relation to one-on-one mentoring. With e-mentoring, there is opportunity to loosen the time and space constraints that hamper formal mentoring programs by drawing upon mentors living in places that may be remote from the proteges (Hamilton & Scandura, 2003). The Internet makes possible more connections between schools and adult work environments in which learning has high priority. In recent years, e-mentoring program directors have achieved considerable success in their efforts to engage students and knowledgeable adult volunteers worldwide in long-term curriculum-based relationships (O’Neill & Harris, 2004). E-mentoring may be a practical way to give students and faculty expanded opportunities to engage as participants in communities of practice beyond the confines of the school. Researchers are now focusing more on understanding what will be necessary to bring e-mentoring programs to scale (Cravens, 2003). Future efforts may be limited in important ways by our understanding of the expectations that participants (including students, mentors, and teachers) bring to their work online. How these expectations lead participants to interpret and respond to the experiences they have together can and should shape the design of e-mentoring programs in the future (Fulop, 2002). Electronic mentoring, e-mentoring, is the merging of traditional one-on-one mentoring with the digital age and is rapidly becoming a mentoring method of choice, especially in virtual education. With time becoming a scarce commodity, e-mentoring through e-mail, Internet chat rooms, electronic bulletin boards, or instant messaging systems provide opportunities for virtual meetings when face-to-face sessions may not be possible (Rothwell, Jackson, Knight, & Lindholm, 2005). E-mentoring may provide the protege with several mentors from whom they may choose. The mentoring process involves a mentor, a more experienced person in the field, and a protege, student or beginning professional. Brown and Lent (2005) noted that formal mentoring programs pair participants with volunteers who provide one-on-one friendship, guidance, and support to students. Usually mentors will be university or school staff, faculty, corporate personnel, professionals, older peers, or volunteers from the community. The expected outcomes of the mentoring relationship are that the students’ academic performance will