Digital Mentoring via Emerging Technologies

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the digital transformation era and the evolution from mentoring to e-mentoring. One of the groups most affected by this situation is the mentees doing graduate studies. In this context, e-mentoring enables the mentee and mentor to carry out their academic study using digital technologies in mutual interaction, regardless of time and geographical space. This study is designed as a case study of the qualitative research methods where the study group consists of graduate students. Five main themes and 14 sub-themes are determined from the interviews with mentees on e-mentoring perceptions. According to the research findings, mentees prefer a two-stage approach in mentee-mentor matching. Mentees emphasize that they favor matching with emerging technologies at the first stage and finalizing the mentor selection process by mentee-mentor face-to-face negotiation in the second stage. Mentees also mention that besides some e-mentoring advantages, there are psycho-social benefits of face-to-face mentoring.