Theme 3: Crossing Interprofessional, Intercultural, and Interpersonal
Boundaries in Knowledge Building
Shared Resources: Telementoring and Distributed Expertise
A
comparison of audio-based telementoring and face-to-face mentoring
Wendy Hardman, Jim Hewitt, Richard Messina, & Marlene Scardamalia
OISE, University of Toronto, ON, Canada
Wendy Hardman, Jim Hewitt, Richard Messina, & Marlene Scardamalia
OISE, University of Toronto, ON, Canada
This poster describes a comparative study in which teacher candidates mentored elementary school children in two different situations: face-to-face and over the Internet using enhanced audio telementoring. Eleven teacher candidates enrolled in a one-year post-Baccalaureate teacher education program participated in this experiment with a class of grade 4 students in a Toronto area school. The findings point to the potential for audio communication as a means of mentoring junior-level students. However, it was also revealed that technical problems as well as lack of familiarity with telementoring software could detract from productive online conversation. The next phase of research will involve the development of new telementoring models that will hopefully overcome some of these problems.