Mentoring Issues

Nicky and I had a mentoring session today so I thought it would be good to list the points we discussed so we don't forget anything and also to have an example of the kind of issues that can be raised in an e-mentoring situation.

The first issue Nicky had today was how to identify which books are worth investing it. I think this is a perfectly justifiable question for any students today what with tuition fees rising and purse-strings being drawn tighter across the country. Academic books can sometimes be very expensive indeed and for a distance learning student getting hold of the books from the university library may not be easy or even possible. Some books are of course available in digital form and sites like Amazon sometimes have previews of a few pages but this is not always a good basis to make a buying decision on. Luckily for Nicky I have already completed a paper on her chosen topic (mobile learning) so I was able to give her my own personal recommendations based on the books I read here in the past. Not everyone is so lucky though so I think this could be a situation where more thought could be given to the availability of good literature. It is definitely a point where distance learners are at a disadvanatage compared to on-campus learners.

The second point we discussed was how to organise and control all of the sources that you find in the course of your research. Here we discovered we are the exact opposite - Nicky likes to read documents printed out and take notes digitally, I prefer to read the documents digitally and take my notes using pen and paper. Either way, it seems like we both have our difficulties with retaining order but perhaps tools like zotero might be the answer. I have never used it but zotero, which is a free Firefox plugin, promises to take all of the hassle out of remembering sources, attributing quotes, writing references correctly etc. If it works that well in practice it could definitely be helpful during the rest of my degree so I have downloaded it to give it a try.

The final problem we discussed today was a technical issue regarding the use of google docs to host questionnaires. This is something I used myself last year and I found it very easy to use. The system for creating questions is powerful but it is still easy to use. As recipients respond to your questionnaire their responses are automatically added to a spreadsheet and once you have some responses google docs can automatically generate a statistical summary and lovely graphics of the results. I am actually using google docs again this trimester to repeat my learning and technology survey from last year. I am sure that more professional studies might frown on the use of google docs due to privacy and data security fears but for a small scale project it seems like google docs works great. I look forward to seeing the results of Nicky's research.

Hopefully our mentoring session managed to address all of these issues today, we will just have to wait and see!

Neil