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I have this week had a real professional challenge around a mentoring relationship with someone you haven't met. I come from a background that values face to face multi-sensory signal interaction.Without that the relationship seems lacking.http://www.socialworker.com/onlinesu.htm
offers in sights into social work supervision in a chat room, BUT they still say need to meet and have a sense of the other first.
Does anyone have a feel from experience of how this intense professional realtionships are managed successfully without ever meeting?
I would be most grateful.
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14 comments:
I think it is problematic, Willie and you have to be really committed to the process to work without first meeting. I have mentored and been a mentee online very successfully, but I must admit, in all cases I have had at least one F2F meeting. And my PhD research in which I have tried to set up an ementoring online system, without F2F interaction has not been successful.
Having said that, I do not think it is impossible. Phone and web cam helps to add personal elements. And having support from a facilitator is good to help motivation going. Have you read Gilly Salmon's work on e-moderation?
Sarah
I appreciatr your honesty about this.
I will look atr Gilly Salmon for some clues to erelationship success.
Willie
I think it is perfectly possible but people have to be motivated. I have to say that I am becoming increasingly interested in community mentoring. What do you think about this idea?
Personally, I have deeper more productive professional relationships online than I do face to face. And have mentored and been mentored online for about 9 years now. I much prefer it, and do believe it to be more successful for me than the face to face experiences of the same nature that I have had to date.
and I realise this may appear to say more about me than it does about the Internet for interaction :)
The thing is though Leigh, I think it depends on what you mean by mentoring. Like you, I have some great online relationships but 'ordinary' relationships can be different from mentoring relationships, and they are not necessarily so easy to develop - and I would say that that would apply in the F2F context as well.
The people I have been thinking about in my comments are those extremely new to online life, and they have really struggled with the concept. But, at the same time, I also don't think they've worked very hard at it either. But, on the other, other hand, maybe I didn't prepare them well enough, which takes me back to Salmon's work again.
I agree sarah that a mentoring or suopervision relationship is different from a clear collegial one and does need more work and a different set of understood rules of engagement. I do believe that for people where online relationships are new, then the techynical and remoteness of some of these becomes overpowering.
Leigh
It maybe that you are so confident in this enivoronment and actually are very much a senior contributing member that my concerns seem rather strange.
I'll keep thinking- clearly I could benefit from looking at Gilly Salmaon.
An interesting topic. Good to see some familiar faces on the comments - I am definately 'remote' at the moment. I would agree that familiarity with using e-technoogies would be a contributing factor. I quite like the asynchronous aspect of it - gives me time to think and respond. I supervise some post-grad students entirely online. I think it works very well for some people. Some students can't resist phoning to have a chat and even though this is not face to face it does assist in the supervision relationship. Easier to catch the non-verbals.
Hi Willie
Great to see you are keeping up with the blogging.
Great to hear from you, Linda. How's it going?
well linda
great to hear from you. as you can see I have been distracetd during september by two things-
1) this damned connectivism course that truly fascinates me- its management is just so brilliant a mix of let it happen and here's how it could happen;
and the discussions around learning theory which I find anything but dry, so read several times a day.
and
2) the staff at CAP,l have been engaged in e reflective exercise to lead to a papare for the next SCOPE Flexible Learning- and herein comes my renewed interest in the challenge of maintining a relationship both asychronous and apart.
More will be heard of this I promise you.
Willie
It has been interesting being part of such a big network. Unfortunately my access to e-technology has been lousy so I am limping along missing some and noticing other posts. I think this will only get better - time will tell! I also noticed when looking at teaching using elearning everyone invariably said that it was much better for people to meet face to face at some point. I agree, however this is not always possible - but somehow no-one mentions this. Its as though f2f is a given. To be honest I would not chat with you in this way unless I knew you!! I remember that one metaphor used in regards to the role of the teacher was that he/she was like a curator - ie. puts out the exhibits and helps people to explore them. I like that imagery and think it works well for this course.
Me again! I'm not sure how useufl this artivle would be but thought I would mention it: http://emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewContentItem.do?contentType=Article&contentId=1524127&StyleSheetView=all
@Linda Is the way you're chatting with us because you 'know' us in a F2F context, or because you don't do a lot of computer-mediated communication. I ask because that's not my experience. I have built completely online relationships with people and chat away to them, without ever having met them. But that's because I have a sad life and no 'real' friends :)
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