The first wave of online learning was content. The second wave is support. One of our biggest challenges as online institutions is to keep students enrolled and motivated to complete online classes. In this session, we will showcase through research and experience how online mentoring improves persistence.
EXTENDED ABSTRACT
Traditional student support services, specifically mentoring, does not align with the design and benefits of online learning formats. Online learning is more autonomous and not locked to a physical location, making it difficult for mentors and mentees to connect in person. In this session, we break down our research and learning milestones from organizing online mentoring programs for 52 high schools and nearly 3,500 online students. Most of the students who are participating in our online mentoring program are from rural and underserved areas, where access to in-person mentorship is often limited. Online program allows students to receive unfettered access to guidance and support in the palm of their hands. The session will introduce the benefits of online mentoring such as access, convenience, and tracking. The audience will also take a deep dive on how increased touch points from online mentoring interactions can create a faster feedback loop for their institutions.
When we talk about smaller class sizes, personalized learning, and other similar buzz phrases, what we’re really talking about is how to make education as close to a one-to-one experience as possible. That’s because we know one-to-one relationships are the single most effective way to teach, guide, and change lives. In a recent story by North Carolina news station WRAL, of the 4,400 North Carolina students who enrolled in 2017 into Connections Academy and North Carolina Virtual Academy, 1,200 students (nearly 27 percent) have already unenrolled.[1] Now, for the first time in history, we have the technology capabilities to make online human support a reality. We should all be thinking about what that means for education equity, resource equity, and accessibility.
In this session, we take the audience through a collaborative crash course on online mentoring by sharing how we measure success, our methodology, and partnership process to building a successful opportunity for their students. Audience members will leave excited and inspired about the concepts shared in our session and consider online mentoring as a viable option to solve their persistence issue when offering online learning opportunities.
PRESENTATION AGENDA
- Dynamic introduction through humor and crowd participation (3 minutes)
- Strong opening statement to bring the audience together (2 minutes)
- Overarching theme presented (8 minutes)
- What is online mentoring?
- Why is this important?
- What are the benefits of starting an online mentoring program?
- Share the process (12 minutes)
- How it works
- What strategic partnerships need to be made
- Collaborative partnership exercise with audience
- How we measure success (10 minutes)
- Methodology
- Results
- Interactive Live Demo
- Closing Discussion and Questions (5-10 minutes)
AUDIENCE MEMBERS WILL:
- Be engaged and inspired to start a discussion about online mentoring with decision makers and take action with other colleagues in their organization.
- Understand the importance of online mentoring and how it can help with online learning persistence.
- Learn the importance of partnerships in their community to make online mentoring possible.
- Receive first-hand experience and insight on how to recruit, train, and vet mentors for an online mentoring program.
- Analyze and deconstruct the research and experiences of the presenter to come to their own conclusion on the future of mentoring.
- Collaborate with other audience members to discuss point of views and opportunities when it comes to starting an online mentoring program.
- Receive demonstrations of online tools that make online mentoring programs safe and data-driven.
- Share questions and what they have learned to provide clarity and a complete understanding of the possibilities within online mentoring.
SECTIONS OF THE PRESENTATION
- Partnerships for Online Mentoring Programs
Online mentoring is not possible without partnerships and bringing other entities together. The majority of our partnered high schools are traditional public schools. There are several stakeholders involved that make these programs possible, including legal entities, local universities, district offices, and schools. We will share our process from beginning to end so that the audience has a foundation of what it takes to build an online mentoring program. There will be advice and tips on how to collaborate with universities to recruit, train, and vet mentors to fit the needs of specific student populations.
- How We Measure Success of Online Mentoring Programs
Our first step of measuring impact is to track the number of interactions and time spent between student and their e-mentor. The average student who participated in our program last year shared 45 text messages a month communicating with their e-mentor. By 2018, we will be collecting over one million unique interactions between students and mentors every six months. To date, we are actively developing strategies that will allow us to map, categorize, and measure impact within our current data sets so we can provide insight to our audience in April.
Second, we measure outcomes based off the goals created and completed between students and e-mentors. Students and mentors create goals at the beginning of the program and notify program organizers when they complete a goal. Ninety seven percent of our students say their e-mentor has helped them work toward or achieve a goal.
The final aspect is measuring retention and student satisfaction. Eighty percent of our students stayed actively engaged with their mentor for an entire year, giving them consistent one-to-one support throughout the school year. We also ask students to rate their e-mentor out of five stars and last cycle we had a 4.7 star rating.
- Our Methodology
Our team has expanded access to high quality mentorship for all students by blending software and human capital (college e-mentors) in a way that provides a wrap-around service for online learning.
The software we use records all interactions between students and their mentors, keeping time stamped logs of texts and emails to the second and phone calls to the minute. We recruit and train near-peer mentors to use the engagement software to keep extensive notes, record the content of phone calls, and log progress on other key performance indicators.
We aggregate student-level data such as goal completion and resource exploration to then send a monthly activity report to our partnered schools. We work closely with schools to analyze the data and ensure that outcomes are in line with institutional goals, then use those findings to further personalize the mentor experience for each student.
The combination of these areas is important in understanding our social impact. Education research often has long feedback loops and it can take years to see the impact of certain programs and policy changes. Our solution of having flexible mentors to personalize the experience for each student, engagement software, and school partnerships gives us outcome data each month that we work with our partner institutions to confront and act on.
THIRD PARTY RESEARCH THAT MEASURES THE POSITIVE AND SOCAIL IMPACT OF ACTIVITY SIMILAR TO WHAT IS BEING DISCUSSED IN THE PRESENTATION.
Eby, Lilian T. et. al. Does Mentoring Matter? A Multidisciplinary Meta-Analysis Comparing Mentored and Non-Mentored Individuals: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2352144/
Scandura, Terri A. E-mentoring: Implications for Organizational Learning and Development in a Wired World: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Terri_Scandura/publication/263068754_E-Mentoring/links/551a99ad0cf244e9a458a12c/E-Mentoring.pdf
University of Southern California School of Education 2014-2015 impact data for the Southern California College Advising Corps, which has a similar focus and methodology to Student Success Agency: https://cerpp.usc.edu/files/2014/01/SCCAC-Impact-Report-2014-15_sized_Final.pdf
Panopoulos, A. & Sarri, K. (2013). E-mentoring: The adoption process and innovation challenge. https://chronicle.umbmentoring.org/what-makes-e-mentoring-work/
Ensher, Ellen A. E-mentoring as a Critical E-learning Approach: The Impact of Social Presence on E-mentoring: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276291656_E-mentoring_as_a_Critical_E-learning_Approach_The_Impact_of_Social_Presence_on_E-mentoring
[1] http://www.wral.com/nearly-2-500-students-have-left-nc-s-online-charter-...