Entering Mentoring

The online book called Entering Mentoring, by J. Handelsman, C. Pfund, S. Miller Lauffer and C. Maidl Pribbenow, contains useful information for mentors. It is written for graduate students mentoring undergraduates in biology labs, but a lot of the information is relevant to other situations. In particular, you may want to read the following sections.

• Overview by Becky Vandiver.
• Page 31: Some suggestions regarding what you can do to make sure students "understand what you are saying."
• Pages 39-48: A reprint of the booklet entitled Adviser, Teacher, Role Model, Friend, published by the National Academies.
• Pages 52-64: A chapter entitled Mentoring: Learned, Not Taught, by J. Handelsman.
• Pages 94-101: A section on how to write a good paper/report, entitled Righting Writing, by J. Handelsman.

Mentoring Seminar

Below are links to some of the literature discussed in the 2006 mentoring seminar, together with summaries provided by the participants.

Small Group Mentoring

A summary of the surveyed literature, prepared by the student participants.

Lessons from the best and worst student team experiences: How a teacher can make the difference

By D.R. Bacon, K.A. Stewart, and W.S. Silver, Journal of Management Education 23, 467-488 (1999).

Overview by Becky Vandiver.

Coorperative Learning for Higher Education Faculty

by B.J. Millis and P.G. Cottell, Oryx Press, 1998.

Overview by Mark Robertson-Tessi.

Planning and running effective classroom-based exercises

by R.D. Woodberry and H.W. Aldrich, Teaching sociology 28, 241-248 (2000).

Overview by Jared Barber.

Literature Reviews

• A review of articles on Creativity among individuals and groups, by Serina Diniega.
• A review of articles on Peer learning groups, by Jared Barber.
• A review of articles on Student assessment in problem-based learning, by Serina Diniega.
• A review of articles on Getting students to work together and on Critical mindedness, by Becky Vandiver.
• A review of Discussion techniques, by Serina Diniega.