Telementor Guide

How do mentors support students in doing their best work? Telementoring presents an opportunity to walk through an investigation with students and help save them unnecessary frustration. Since they are so much more knowledgeable than their mentees, mentors are able to focus students’ thinking on an investigation that is likely to be feasible and yield some interesting results. Asking a few diplomatic questions at the start of students' work can have tremendous payoff. As one of our volunteers said, mentors are uniquely placed to “encourage [students] to go and look up things and to think about things critically.” Once students are clearer about what they want or need to know, and especially once they post draft work online, the mentor’s role shifts to that of a responsive and critical audience. Now, a mentor gets a chance to offer tips on improving or enriching the ongoing work. This is a challenge that many of our mentors have looked forward to and took pride in, because it allowed them to exercise their professional know-how to the fullest.