Changes for document eMentoring

From version 28.1
To version 30.1
edited by Ajdin Brandic
on 2009/04/08 17:39
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Parent Cases.WebHome
Document author Ajdin Brandic
Default language en
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EnterpriseProject.jpg Attachment has been added
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Comment number 0 added
Author Caroline Daly
Date 09/10/2008 11:53:47
Comment content Andrew, the contect of the 'Dragon's Den' is certainly novel in thinking about formative assessment, and you indicate there were various tensions when formative assessment is applied to a competitive business context like this. It provokes lots of questions. What exactly was the type of knowledge or skills/attributes which the e-mentoring was trying to foster in the mentees? How compatible is that with formative assessment as a way of increasing learners' knowledge etc? And was there learning for the mentors? Were they changing their practice as part of the feedback process? I'm trying to get at the actual types of relationships between the people involved and the learning going on, and what the 'formative' bit looked like - difficult.....
Comment number 1 added
Author Andrew Merryweather
Date 21/10/2008 12:41:41
Comment content Hi Caroline, I'll try to clarify things a bit (though risk muddying things more!) The mentees were drawing a couple of things out of this: "hard" knowledge and skills around devising and writing a business plan which would be presented as part of the Dragon's Den event; "soft" support from mentors helping with the diverse issues the businesses faced as they prepared their plans and pitches, helping them through the stresses and strains of the process. The compatibility of formative assessment with this process depends a bit on the definition of formative assessment - what qualifies? In the high-level sense of providing a series of feedback loops, moments when the participants reflect on progress and - crucially - adjust the approach based on that reflection, I think it's definitely appropriate. The idea was that we would provide a set of tools that would make it easy to capture - and reflect on - every interaction (however informal) between mentors and mentees. We encouraged participants not just to check that the "hard" knowledge was being passed to the mentees, but also to think about whether the process itself was working. This "clicked" for some of the mentor/mentee pairs; they periodically reflected on their interactions, and the mentor and/or mentee might then adjust the way they were working to try and make the process work better. e.g. Move from online contact to more face-to-face contact. Or change from making contact as-and-when needed, to a regularly-scheduled meeting. Or include more or less "formal" content delivery in their interactions. At the same time, the mentors were following their own programme to improve their mentoring skills, and met 3 or 4 times for seminars and workshops during the course of the project, which would also involve reflecting on the records of interactions and seeing what was working and what wasn't. There was another stream that was tracking the businesses' ability to measure themselves against key, quantitative, statistical indicators. The 3rd-party observers could check their progress - it was a more formal kind of assessment, and was repeated, with feedback. But arguably it had less of an effect on behaviour during the project than the less formal kind of reflective processes happening via the mentoring.
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Object number 0 of type Cases.CaseClass added
Owner XWiki.andrewm
LegalRights Yes
Situation The context was mentoring. The idea of the project was to create a hub in which we drew in business mentors, representatives of small social enterprises and third party observers. about ten mentors and twenty businesses scattered across the country.  The process lasted three months. Interactions on line, on phone etc were tracked by mentors and mentees using moodle. Two set of notes  were created  a set of notes giving feedback to mentees and another set of notes which reflected on the process of mentoring. The latter was only shared with mentors.  In order to preserve confidential business information mentees did not share notes. The motivation of mentees was high because they wanted to pitch up successfully on Dragon's Den.
Group Formative e-Assessment
Lastedited 06/05/2008 14:10:50
Summary an exploration of using online tools to facilitate mentoring
Name eMentoring
Status seed
Created 06/05/2008 14:10:50
License CC-BY-NC-SA (recommended)
Task The problem was to make it easier for the mentoring process to happen through the online tools. Two streams of training; the mentoring of the business people and the observers were training the mentors. \\ {image:EnterpriseProject|574|861|left|center} \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ [0>../../download/Cases/eMentoring/EnterpriseProject.jpg].href.value='EnterpriseProject.jpg'; return false;">
Actions We provided the digital tools to make that happen. A heavily customised moodle was provided to catch any interactions. We used the assignment function as a way of  highlighting documents for mentees  to use. Interactions on line, on phone etc were tracked by mentors and mentees using Moodle. For the most part, this was a one-to-one process. Two set of notes were created. A set of notes giving feedback to mentees and another set of notes which reflected on the process of mentoring. The latter was only shared with mentors. Mentees did not share notes with each other because of the sensitive material being discussed.There was also a task list. Some of tasks were  reflective addressing process. The outcomes of these discussions suggested things like 'the communication isn't happening, you need to engage a lot more strongly with...' The feedback  suggested change in process which sometimes was difficult to do in practice.
Results There is an interaction between mentors and mentees. We gave them a tool to facilitate interactions. We found some challenges technological nature of tools sensitive issues of business on line Some successes some people got over the ict barriers. They used way of tracking really effectively
Contributors XWiki.CarolineDaly,XWiki.LindaMcGuigan,XWiki.JudithJakes
Lessonslearnt It can be difficult to change practice in the course of a fairly concise process.
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