Tag: phd

mentor, mentoring, PhD, Research

Cultivating Mentoring: Peer Mentorship Matters for Doctoral Scholars

Laura Pasquini

Mentoring of doctoral scholars vary between disciplines and domains of practice. Mentorship is generally seen as both a relationship and process between a minimum of two individuals seeking to share and build knowledge, expertise, and support (Williams & Kim, 2011). Mentoring occurs within informal and formal settings in terminal degree programs. Often (but not always) doctoral scholars are mentored by a faculty advisor or supervisor; however, even more are seeking mentorship from professionals, practitioners, and peers within their industry or workplace. In thinking back to your own graduate school or doctoral learning experience, who did you seek out or stubble upon for as a mentor? Where did you find professional support for your research and career plans? Who was part of your mentoring community for the work you do?

Over the past few years, I have been working with scholars and practitioners to understand how formal and informal mentoring experiences develop occupational pathways for academic writers, researchers, and higher education professionals. Traditionally, mentoring is viewed as a face-to-face, long-term relationship with interactions between an experienced colleague and a novice professional or learner to support professional, academic, or personal development of the protégé (Donaldson, Ensher, & Grant-Vallone, 2000). With emergent technologies and digital access to colleagues, this no longer needs to be the only model or experience for establishing mentoring relationships. Graduate students and early career scholars/practitioners are beginning to form peer networks to learn and thrive as they set out on their own professional paths. We can now find mentoring opportunities within our networks, communities, and areas of interest in online settings.

With the opportunity to connect to scholars and practitioners beyond geographic boundaries, time zones, and physical locations, it is possible to establish a mentoring relationship with one or many professionals/academics from afar. Also, the typical dyad of the mentoring experience is shifting as structures are evolving to support specific career goals and personal life changes. There is an increase in peer-to-peer, group, and networked mentoring opportunities. In a recent study, we wanted to know more about these digital mentoring experiences of doctoral scholars so we asked the following research questions:

  1. What type of mentoring opportunities are you involved with formally or informally to reach your personal and professional goals?
  2. What expectations and motivations did you bring to this mentoring relationship?
  3. What sort of resources, support, and kinship occurs within peer mentoring experiences in digital environments?

In exploring mentoring opportunities in-person and within digital environments, we learned most early career scholars sought out a mentor to help them with the follow areas of professional development and growth:

  • Navigating the norms, expectations, and experiences working in academia
  • Gaining career advice and guidance for planning their professional path
  • Improving or developing a particular applied skill related to scholarship (e.g. academic writing, research methods, instruction, etc.)
  • Learning from others on team-based projects, labs, or group assignments that had a shared vision, goal(s), and outcome(s)
  • Offering and receiving feedback, personal support, and professional advice from and among their peers
  • Identifying ways to communicate, virtually team, and work collaboratively from a distance

There are so many possibilities for early career scholarship mentoring, and part of this is just the beginning. I have no doubt that you might even have your own reflections or maybe research to share OR you are thinking about ways to support your graduate students. If you want to find out more about this research, I will be posting these findings and implications from this study here over the next couple of months: https://techknowtools.com/mentoring/

References:

Donaldson, S. I., Ensher, E. A., & Grant-Vallone, E. J. (2000). Longitudinal examination of mentoring relationships on organizational commitment and citizenship behavior. Journal of Career Development, 26(4), 233-249.

Williams, S. L., & Kim, J. (2011). E-mentoring in online course projects: Description of an e-mentoring scheme. International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching & Mentoring, 9(2).

 

Thanks to Janet Salmons for asking me to share my reflections on these findings at #SAGEMethodSpace (https://www.methodspace.com/) you can find a version of this blog post cross-posted HERE.

mentor, mentoring, Research

How Were You Mentored as a Doctoral Student? Tell Us About It!

Laura Pasquini

Mentoring of doctoral students is varied and diverse depending on the degree, discipline, and institution. I know that mentoring happens informally and formally from peers, professors, colleagues, and more. Sometimes it is from a faculty advisor or supervisor; however, more often then not we meet professionals, practitioners and other scholars who offer some form of personal/professional mentoring while completing a terminal degree. In thinking back to my graduate school experience, there was definitely a tribe of mentors who supported my professional development, research and career plans. From my departmental ATPI Research/Writing Group and LPQ Journal editing on campus to digital networks like #phdchat, many #edtech colleagues, my @BreakDrink podcasting family, the @AcAdvChat community, and MANY more, who mentored me formally and informally during my Ph.D. journey.

HOW were YOU mentored as a doctoral student or in your terminal degree program?

  • What sort of mentoring experiences did experience in your Ph.D., Ed.D., or M.F.A. program?
  • Who did you seek out to build formal or informal mentoring relationships?
  • How did you “stay in touch” or connect with these mentors from a distance, if they were not on campus?
  • How did these individual, group, or peer-to-peer mentoring experiences impact your own career development and professional growth?
  • OR if you feel like you didn’t really have opportunities to be mentored formally/informally, tell us what you WOULD have liked during and post-graduate degree?

Exploring the Impact of Mentoring for Doctoral Students

If you have some answers to any or all of the above questions, consider helping one of my own doctoral scholars with her research project. We are curious to learn about the nature and dynamics of mentoring relationships, specifically HOW they impact students in terminal degree programs. This might include mentoring experiences outside of the faculty advisor/supervisor role and even beyond campus. Mentoring experiences we know often occur from conference attendance, academic meetings, professional organization involvement and within your own or other disciplines of scholarship/work

The goal of this research is to understand how doctoral students experience mentoring during and after the completion of their terminal graduate degree programs in both face-to-face and distributed environments. There are a variety of campus stakeholders and professionals who form a collective of mentoring experiences for individuals who are pursuing a terminal degree. With a variety of career paths post-degree, we want to know how doctoral students establish, communicate, and sustain mentoring relationships that support their personal and professional development. We want to know more about these mentoring relationships through the shared narratives of doctoral students who are currently in-progress and/or who has recently completed (in the last 2-5 years) a terminal graduate degree (e.g. Ph.D., Ed.D., M.F.A, etc.).

We would love to know how technologies shape and support these mentoring relationships? This might be to stay in touch, communicate, share on social networks, or even exist within digital learning environments. With the opportunity to connect to scholars and practitioners beyond geographic boundaries, it is now possible for graduate students to establish mentoring relationships with other scholars, peers, and professionals from afar. How are these doctoral scholars finding resources, support, and kinship within peers in online networks? What type of mentoring opportunities have doctoral learners found either formally or informally to reach their personal and professional goals? Are there mentoring groups, peer-to-peer, or professional experiences that have guided their early career decisions and/or direction?

To volunteer for a 30-minute interview for this study, please complete this form: https://unt.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_d06SO2d0GL8al6d

To learn more and/or participate in the project, please find further details about this study here: https://ltiwithme.wordpress.com/2018/04/27/exploring-mentoring-relationships/ or contact Laura Pasquini (Laura.Pasquini@unt.edu) or Meranda Roy (Meranda.Roy@unt.edu).

mentor, mentoring, PhD

RESEARCH STUDY REQUEST: Exploring Doctoral Researchers’ Mentoring Relationships

Laura Pasquini

As previously shared, mentoring has been a significant interest in my personal and professional career. I am working on drafting the findings from previous mentoring program study at the moment; however, I am thrilled to share a study one of my doctoral scholars is currently working on related mentoring for doctoral scholars.

The goal of this research is to understand how graduate students experience mentoring DURING and AFTER the completion of their terminal graduate degree programs in both face-to-face and distributed environments. We really want to know how doctoral scholars establish, communicate, and sustain a mentoring relationship that contributes to their personal and professional development. Also, we are curious to learn about the nature and dynamics of this relationship and to understand if any of these mentoring experiences occur from a distance or involve mentoring with a professional/scholar beyond their own institution of study.

If you are (or know of) a doctoral researcher who is in-progress or has recently completed (in the last 5-8 years) a terminal graduate degree (e.g. Ph.D., Ed.D., M.F.A.), please consider volunteering 30-minutes to participate in a research interview. If you are interested and available please complete this informed consent form: https://unt.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_d06SO2d0GL8al6d

Here is more information about this research study is posted by my co-investigator, Meranda Roy, directly from her blog.

networkedscholar, Research

Being A Networked Scholar

Laura Pasquini

Using social media and being a networked scholar allows provides you with an online, research presence and connects you to academics inside and outside your field. The power of open, social networks, allows academic to connect to research and researchers across disciplines. Consider all the ways you can collaborate and share in social media. A growing number of scholars have adopted and joined these online scholarly communities to meet other like-minded scholars, solicit for research support, share project progress, and disseminate findings beyond a conference publication or journal article. A core value of open, online networked scholarship is it is “a place where scholars can congregate to share their work, ideas and experiences” (Veletsianos, 2013, p. 648).  There are a number of researcher identification and citation tools connected to social media sites and scholarly metrics. Teaching and research information are being distributed and shared across platforms and communities.

elearn14-digital-scholarship-21-638

“It is a critical time to rethink how research is produced, distributed, and acknowledged.”

(Pasquini, Wakefield, Reed & Allen, 2014, p. 1567).

As I investigate workplace learning and performance, it has been helpful to blog and bounce ideas off on others on Twitter. I have used Mendeley to work on literature reviews, Google+ hangouts for research team meetings, Google documents for collaborative writing/research, searched Academia.edu or ResearchGate to access publications, and posted academic results to SlideShare. These are just a few ways I like to “show my work” and work in the open as a scholar. Being social and online allows me to reflect on my academic teaching and research scholarship experiences, and it has connected me to a great number of academics who I learn and research among.

If you or another academic colleague are thinking about how social media and networks can impact your teaching, research, and service scholarship, then here are a few insights George & I shared via Royal Roads University post on networked scholarship.

Network with colleagues

Higher education faculty and academics are adopting social media in growing numbers. A 2011 survey, for example, found that 45 % of higher education respondents use Facebook for professional, non-classroom purposes. Joining social media networks allows scholars to connect with colleagues, offer resources and discuss issues of professional interest.

Solicit feedback and reflect on your research and teaching

Academics increasingly share their work online, often engaging in activities that impact practice. Academic-focused social networking sites, such as Academia.edu and Mendeley, and general interest sites such as Twitter and SlideShare provide scholars with places to distribute, discuss and expand on their research and teaching.

Reach multiple audiences

In sharing in open social networks, scholars enter into an interdisciplinary territory and often break down barriers between academic disciplines. Not only are the traditional walls of the academy thinner online, but academic work could reach broader audiences, such as practitioners and journalists.

Cultivate your identity as a scholar

Social media and online networks allow scholars to manage their online identity, track their citations, identify their spheres of influence and connect with colleagues. These tools support different ways in which knowledge can be produced, shared, negotiated and acknowledged. Learn more about a few of these tools here and here.

Become more open

Using social media and online social networks means being a tad more open, and that’s good for all of us. Openness is the practice of sharing resources and materials (e.g., syllabi, lectures, research papers) in a way that allows others to retain, reuse, revise, remix and redistribute them. Social media and online social networks often support an ethos of openness, enabling academics to share their work more frequently. A more open approach to scholarship allows knowledge and education to flow more freely and to be used more widely.

What advice do you give early career researchers and academics who are just getting started with social media?

I am not naive to say that being a networked, social scholars does not have any issues. What challenges do you see in being part of the “open” and involved in networked scholarship? Let me know. A follow-up blog post on this particular question and issue to come…

References:

Pasquini, L., Wakefield, J., Reed, A. & Allen, J. (2014). Digital Scholarship and Impact Factors: Methods and Tools to Connect Your Research. In Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education 2014 (pp. 1564-1569). Chesapeake, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). Retrieved June 1, 2015 from http://www.editlib.org/p/148918.

Veletsianos, G. (2013). Open Practices and Identity: Evidence from Researchers and Educators’ Social Media Participation. British Journal of Educational Technology, 44(3), 639-651.

A version of this blog post is cross-posted on the Royal Roads University website.

Reflections, TBT Posts

#TBT Blog #2: Happy Christmas and the Holiday Comic Strip

Laura Pasquini

Over the past seven years, Fiachra and I have created an annual holiday comic strip for Christmas cards to recap our year. This year we broke the tradition and did not create one. I know. Sad. Maybe we ran out of James Bond themes, or perhaps far too much has happened in 2014 to contain our year events in just one comic strip.

2014 was a full year of great events. Both Fiachra and I completed the academic leg of our lives, as we graduated over the summer with our MBA in Decision Sciences and PhD in Learning Technologies, respectively. After this accomplishment we decided to take a break by taking an EPIC road trip to explore the US southwest. This 5-week journey showcased a number of gorgeous landscapes, outdoor adventures, eclectic attractions, and, most importantly, time to spend with each other and also a chance to catch up with family and friends. Here is a quick spotlight to highlight our travels and year in review:

On behalf of Fiachra and myself, we want to thank you SO MUCH for all your love and support this year. We are so grateful for everything. We wish you and your loved ones a very Happy Christmas, and all the best for 2015!
xo
L and F