Designing virtual mentoring programs based on students’ motivation to participate: a qualitative study
Information and Learning Sciences
ISSN: 2398-5348
Article publication date: 30 July 2024
Issue publication date: 19 November 2024
Abstract
Purpose
Mentoring supports children, adolescents and young adults on their career paths and presents an important extracurricular educational format. The COVID-19 pandemic created a strong impetus for the deployment of virtual mentoring programs (VMPs), in which mentors and mentees communicate completely or predominantly through information and communication technologies (ICTs). Because it is unclear whether VMPs remain an attractive offer to mentors and mentees in post-pandemic times, this study aims to investigate the specific motivations of mentors and mentees to participate in VMPs and to draw conclusions about the effective design of VMPs.
Design/methodology/approach
In a qualitative study, the authors recruited 200 university students for an online survey, in which participants provided text responses regarding their motivations to participate in a youth or academic VMP as a mentor or mentee.
Findings
Potential mentors and mentees expect social components in VMPs. However, the results suggest that participants expect less psychosocial compared to career-related support from virtual mentoring, expect meaningful connections to be established only to a certain extent and do not expect role modeling from mentors. Furthermore, participants voiced mixed opinions about the virtual nature of mentoring programs, revealing a general field of tension (i.e. virtuality improves flexibility vs virtuality impairs relationship building). On this basis, design suggestions regarding VMPs are provided.
Originality/value
This study expands existing knowledge about VMPs by analyzing relevant factors when forming the intention to participate in a mentoring program, considering both youth and academic mentoring.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This study was conducted as part of a research project funded by Deutsche Stiftung für Engagement und Ehrenamt (German Foundation for Civil Activism and Voluntary Work), grant no.: DSEE-FAU-1008110.
Author contribution statement: 1st author: Conceptualization (lead), Data curation, Formal analysis, Methodology (lead), Writing – Original draft (lead), Writing – Review and editing, Project administration. 2nd author: Funding acquisition (shared lead), Conceptualization (supporting), Methodology (supporting), Writing – Review and editing. 3rd author: Funding acquisition (shared lead), Conceptualization (supporting), Methodology (supporting), Writing – Review and editing. 4th author: Funding acquisition (supporting), Conceptualization (supporting), Writing – Review and editing (supporting), Supervision.
Data coding was supported by two research assistants of Freie Universität Berlin supervised by the 1st author. In the methods section, these research assistants are referred to as Rater 1 (Fabienne Ibeka) and Rater 2 (Hannah-Jil Prillwitz).
Competing interests statement: The author(s) declare that they have no competing interests.
Data availability: Data and R scripts are available at the online repository of this study in OSF (https://osf.io/v7y3d/).
Citation
Hennig, F., Wesche, J.S., Handke, L. and Kerschreiter, R. (2024), "Designing virtual mentoring programs based on students’ motivation to participate: a qualitative study", Information and Learning Sciences, Vol. 125 No. 11/12, pp. 1001-1029. https://doi.org/10.1108/ILS-10-2023-0155
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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