Mentoring

Mentoring (5)

Experienced distance education faculty members are frequently called on to assist other faculty make the transition to distance teaching. In recognizing the added workload of mentoring, some institutions have included this in faculty contracts. This term type appears five times in the study results and is a subcategory of Compensation. The compensation for mentoring comes either as added pay or as release time. This is a permissive topic for bargaining.

Examples

Observations. As noted above, faculty members look to each other to assist with the transition to distance teaching. For new distance faculty, this support is invaluable. Indeed, a 2001 study found that some faculty members are reluctant to engage in distance education without such support.

One faculty member expressed the need to have a faculty mentor assigned to her who could guide her through the process of converting her classroom course to a web-based format "I would like a faculty mentor who understands the health technology issues…. and could discuss the pros and cons of the different ways of doing a distance course." Quinn & Correy (2002)

While peer mentoring is generally done on an informal basis, some institutions recognize in their contracts the time involved in this additional work. The absence of mentoring terms in a contract does not indicate that an institution is ignoring this issue. Some institutions address the need for faculty mentors by staffing their distance education or instructional design departments with faculty members on reassigned time. Others host professional development days where experienced faculty give presentations. Such strategies often don’t appear in the contract.