6.2 Suggestions to Support Students with Online Mentoring

Today’s academic settings may include students who are anxious about online learning and who need creative, holistic support. This also proves true with online and in-person mentoring in undergraduate research. Coping with the uncertainties of a pandemic influences teaching inside classrooms and influences research as well. Mentors working in remote environments should consider the following points.

• Be as flexible as possible to keep things simple. Mentor and mentee need to be able to adapt to changing circumstances in their lives and remember that they are a team. Be transparent. This is a time of improvisation, so keeping the lines of communication open is key. Do not fear acknowledging issues.
• Create play. Share ways in which mentor and mentee may engage in mindfulness activities, such as breathing exercises and demonstrating gratitude. Support a mutual means of therapeutic relaxation and creative outlets, such as creating a research playlist, fill-in-the-blank journaling, research breakfasts, lunchtime literature searches, or dinner discussion deep dives. Discover pandemic-specific artwork created for therapeutic means, and create and share your work with each other. Search for tutorials on undergraduate research. Begin and end each mentoring session with favorite quotes of inspiration.
• Encourage the exploration of COVID-19 specific resources for networking. Mentors and mentees need to connect with their peers. Use the time allotted for student meetings and events to spread the work about mentoring and undergraduate research, especially to enhance interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary networks formations.
• Find the humor in the communication and work challenges found in everyday pandemic situations and how those situations affect the mentor’s and mentee’s present day.
• Give the mentee time to process the situation of recovering and redefining post-pandemic life. Consider restructuring the approach to mentoring. Revisit the mentoring contract deliverables or explore new modes of communication. Think of how to make space for mentor and mentee to process inevitable change.
• Prioritize accessing institutional tools that keep mentors and mentees connected with each other and to their peers. Online research does not need to be impersonal. Zoom and other platforms of communication enhance guidance. Remind undergraduate students to access counseling centers if need be.
• Share who you are – our life stories cement our commonalities. Mentors should share their undergraduate research experiences with their mentees. Share mentoring relationship event timelines, as well as pandemic experience event timelines. Knowing mutual challenges may provide comfort in trying to navigate new learning and research environments.
• Tame expectations. Mentors cannot create exceptional mentoring journeys for mentees in only one semester. Focus on optimizing crisis response, not exceptional remote research outcomes.

Adapted from Boettcher and Conrad (2016), Ersin and Atay (2021), Naughton (2021), and Termini et al., (2021).

Case Study: Communication by Design

Professor Dan knows that research in the field of Communication Design is relatively new in academia. During the COVID-19 pandemic, potential mentees from outside the design department approach Professor Dan to explore design research. As is his typical approach, Professor Dan adapts the investigation to the knowledge, interests, and goals of the undergraduate researchers who express interest in working with him. The project begins with one mentee, Adam, looking to solve the ethical problems associated with data collection and misinformation found on social media platforms. Adam is ultimately hoping to product-design a better solution. Bilal and Ali, both freshmen from the same program as Adam, have similar but less defined interests and goals. None of the mentees have any experience with any formal design methodologies, although they all have some casual experience in computer programming. The group of mentees is excited to proceed.

Professor Dan uses the first few in-person meetings getting to know the mentees’ true level of expertise and commitment to a project concept. After three weeks of offering the mentees an opportunity to direct the investigation toward a particular project concept, it becomes clear that the motivation for a singular direction does not exist. In fact, the mentees seem to slowly lose interest and disappear, and their communication drops off. Professor Dan becomes confounded about the lack of response from Adam, Bilal, and Ali. Professor Dan believes there may be unknown challenges to the establishment of a rhythm and structure to mentoring Adam, Bilal, and Ali that caused the project to come to a halt.

Reflection: Do you feel that Professor Dan’s experience was unique in terms of loss of communication with his mentees? What reasons could have precipitated such an event? How should Professor Dan proceed?