Community Mentoring Program

The ascilite Community Mentoring Program aims to provide mentoring opportunities across a number of fields including technical, academic development, learning development, faculty academics and early career researchers, graphic designers, and programmers.

The Community Mentoring Program has been operational since 2003 with approximately 70 members having taken part in the Program. We define mentoring as collaboration between ascilite members for the purpose of achieving an agreed goal through dialogue, action and reflection. The focus of these collaborations can be across a number of areas including:

Academic practice
Early career research
Teaching innovations
Learning design
Graphic design
Programming

Purpose of the Program

The ascilite Community Mentoring Program seeks to involve participants in a professional mentoring relationship built between learners (the mentees) and experienced practitioners (the mentors). Whilst the new learners may be experienced in some areas of educational technologies, the ascilite Community Mentoring Program is a vehicle for enhancement of specific knowledge, skills or capacities in an area of developing expertise.

The Program offers two partnering arrangements:

For a mentee to work individually with a mentor on a project (Community Mentoring Program or CMP)

For several mentees to work collaboratively with a pair of mentors on projects related to a negotiated overall theme (Collaborative Community Mentoring Program or C²MP). This Program was successfully piloted in 2011 and has been adopted as part of the Community Mentoring Program portfolio.

Benefits of the Program

The perceived benefits of participation in the Program include the:

Expansion of skills, knowledge and experience in a chosen field
Development of communication and leadership skills
Opportunity for networking and to create contacts outside of the individual's own workplace
Enhancement of confidence to actively participate in the ascilite community

Partners

Mentoring partners:

Agree on a common goal
Agree to regular contact, at least once per month for six months
Formally participate in an evaluation of the program which may be disseminated through conferences/journal articles
Report back on the outcomes of their projects
If possible, participate in Community Mentoring Program Symposium at the 2012 ascilite Conference

Outcomes of the Program

The Program requires setting achievable goals to be completed in six months - for example, developing a new technical skill, producing a journal article or conference paper, or developing a process of work using skills from another institution. Some examples from successful applicants include:

developing a survey instrument to evaluate impact of a Learning Management System
applying professional project management software tools for managing
educational development projects
developing an understanding of the roles of a learning designer
acquiring the skills to produce a refereed journal article
improving the use of online discussion in teaching

The mentee/s and mentor/s will determine what they aim to achieve and how they will do this. They determine frequency of meetings and methods of communication and formalise these arrangements through a Mentoring Agreement.

Application Process

Expressions of interest are invited from ascilite members who wish to be a mentee or a mentor from January 21, 2013 to February 11, 2013).

This is a competitive process and successful mentees will be matched with mentors with expertise in appropriate areas. Prospective mentees are encouraged to indicate where they have had preliminary discussions with prospective mentors.

Successful 2013 mentees and mentors receive partial subsidy towards registration at the ascilite 2013 conference.

Timeline for 2013

January 2013		Call for 2013 expression of interest
February 2013		Successful applicants contacted
March 2013		Mentor Agreements signed
November 2013		End of year reports due
December 2013		2013 ascilite conference

Successful applicants will be contacted by February 25, 2013.
Mentoring Agreements are signed by March 18, 2013.
Report on outcomes are due November 29, 2013.

The ascilite 2013 Conference (theme: Electric Dreams!) will be held at Macquarie University, Sydney, 1-4 December, 2013.

Application Forms

Mentee Application Form
Mentor Application Form

Please send completed Application forms to the ascilite Secretariat.

Contact

The CMP Chair, Associate Professor Shirley Reushle is the main point of contact during the Program. If you wish to know more about the Community Mentoring Program, please email Shirley (below) or contact the ascilite Secretariat.

Dr Shirley Reushle
Community Mentoring Program Chair
Associate Director, Australian Digital Futures Institute,
University of Southern Queensland
Email: shirley.reushle@usq.edu.au
Phone: 07 4631 2292