Virtual Mentoring Strategies for College Students
In an academic environment, it is widely accepted that teaching based on mentoring is one of the best strategies to help students develop their skills in the most favorable way. Especially with regard to college students, there is a wide choice of mentoring strategies that enable professors to truly discover the potential of their students and promote a positive change in their learning process.
At the same time, all those strategies had to be put into consideration in the time of remote teaching caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. With the new measures taken by universities, norms of social distancing and online teaching, college professors had to quickly adjust their mentoring strategies to the new, virtual environment. To discover what are the best virtual mentoring strategies for college students, follow our short guide.
Introduction to Mentoring
Mentoring is defined as the provision of guidance for the development of specific knowledge, traits, attitudes, or skills. It is a type of one-on-one learning which provides students with valuable insights and experiences they can directly apply to their own circumstances. It has been proven that mentoring plays an important role in college students’ development and social adjustment. Although it is usually done in person, in the times of the COVID-19 pandemic, mentoring apps, such as MentorcliQ, have become more popular.
The mentoring process can be divided into three phases. In the first phase, mentees need to build mutual respect and trust for their mentors. The second phase comprises two elements.
The first element is the mentee’s gradually growing independence from his mentor, which increases his sense of responsibility for his actions and decisions. The second element is the feeling of closeness and comfort that makes the relationship more like that of equals.
In the end, the third phase ensures that both participants feel at ease with each other and concentrate on their joint goals and objectives. The duration of each phase depends on the difficulty of achieving those goals and objectives as well as on how well the mentee and mentor connect with each other.
The Selection of the Right Mentoring Strategies for College Students
For college professors, part of the first step is to select the best possible strategies to help learn particular subjects. A good strategy is one that promotes students’ autonomy in organizing their time, independence in getting things done, and freedom to grow as a person. At the same time, it should be encouraging and allow students to show their excellence or leadership ability. Based on these criteria, professors may choose between five ways of teaching or mentoring college students:
- One-on-one discussions with students are one of the most common ways in which instructors teach college classes. They are also used by professors when they decide to meet with rookies or students that need extra guidance on certain subjects. By scheduling a meeting with a student on a day or time that works for both parties, professors create an atmosphere of community and support that enables both parties to come out stronger from the conversation and exchange their thoughts and ideas more effectively.
- Group work is one of the most prominent campus-wide initiatives used by teachers nowadays. It promotes social interaction among students and provides them with new roles that they might not have explored otherwise. By organizing group work in groups you can also stimulate discussion between students as well as help them develop leadership skills required for their future career paths.
- Connecting with general resources such as workshops and seminars enables professors not only to share their experience in other fields, but also promote cooperation beyond classroom setting and explore new perspectives for learning new knowledge inside college classrooms or outside a campus.
As such, seminars can be particularly great for introducing new study plans throughout the academic year at universities as they encourage networking between diverse groups of people (professors, teachers, researchers) and provide opportunities for improving overall performance as well as embedding more complex ideas into the core curriculum of colleges around the world.
- Studying collaborative projects is another way in which students can collaborate with each other to enhance their knowledge on a particular subject while coordinating different workflows to help complete a project on schedule. Considering the complexities of modern college life, this strategy may be particularly useful if used along with traditional teaching methods inside classrooms.
- Simulation exercises provide teachers with an opportunity to test their skills before using them inside college classrooms: these exercises are highly appreciated when coming up with complicated solutions before using them inside actual situations without risks involved later on.
It is important to note that simulation exercises are commonly used by engineers before assembling an object or machine in order to know how to use them properly later on. Simulating engineering projects can therefore provide engineers with an opportunity to avoid many risks during later stages of manufacturing or finishing their prototypical model.
The Bottom Line
Mentoring college students is easier than mentoring teenagers or even younger kids. This is because university students are not too likely to misbehave or outright act against their mentor’s advice.
On the one hand, it makes the process of mentoring college students much smoother, but on the other, it means that it requires a professional approach and an immense amount of knowledge of a particular subject. Otherwise, the mentoring meetings won’t bear much fruit at all.
