E-Mentoring 'MentorTokou': Support For Mentors and Mentees During The Practicum

Building on the different components of effective mentoring, MentorTokou has been developed to compliment face-to-face mentoring. MentorTokou is designed to foster and provide mentoring support for students in a local university in Malaysia. This portal provides the opportunity for mentors and mentees to interact online. Two major features are public discussions and private chat. The purpose of this study is to investigate the preliminary outcomes of the MentorTokou portal that was implemented during the practicum. A qualitative case study was employed to explore the experiences of two mentors and twenty three mentees who participated in the preliminary study using focus group discussions and individual interviews. The preliminary results indicated that the impact of using the e-mentoring MentorTokou was generally positive, however, there were some constraints faced during the implementation. The final emerging themes were mentoring support covering both instructional and personal social support. The instructional support were benefits of e-mentoring in terms of accessibility and availability, peer coaching, communication, scaffolding provided by mentor for enhancement of current progress and practices in teaching and learning strategies and outcomes. The personal and social support indicated motivation and building and establishing rapport. A higher preference of utilization the 'public discussion' feature was dominant in this study. The constraints highlighted were the lack of accessibility to the internet connection and a preference for personal contact and communication. The initial outcomes of this study implied that e-mentoring is an alternative way to compliment face-to-face mentoring during the practicum. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.