Shared responsibilities of teachers and mentors in a curriculum-based telementoring project in the humanities

This thesis explores issues and questions relating to the teacher's enabling role in a technology-based innovation called telementoring. Data originated from a SSHRCfunded research project entitled Tracking Canada's Past (TCP). In 2001 - 2002, a pilot project was conducted in two British Columbia schools to investigate the application of telementoring to high school Social Studies curriculum. The initiative, facilitated through the use of web-based groupware, brought grade 10 students, teachers and adult volunteers together in a geographically distributed learning community that pursued a variety of research projects related to the Canadian Pacific Railway. This study uses a combination of questionnaires, interviews, and automatically generated records of students' and mentors' online activity to investigate how teachers may contribute to the development of successful on-line mentoring relationships. Two case narratives illuminate the kinds of facilitation that teachers can do to foster productive telementoring relationships and a sustainable mentor pool.