Development of a technology mentor survey instrument: Understanding student mentors' benefits

Abstract

Agreement on the effectiveness of the technology mentoring approach in addressing educators' needs for learning different technologies has been growing. Literature on the concept of mentoring in general and technology mentoring specifically has indicated mentoring relationships in different settings provide benefits for the less experienced mentoring partner, while existing literature was limited in providing insights about mentoring from the more experienced partner's point of view. But, studies have suggested that understanding mentors' reactions to the experience is necessary to establish sustainable and mutually beneficial mentoring relationships. For this purpose, this study discusses and proposes an assessment framework and an instrument to examine benefits for technology mentors. Considering the lack of similar studies and the absence of an instrument designed specifically to study this subject, we believe that our study will contribute to the knowledge base by providing educators with an assessment strategy and a tool for investigating the benefits gained by the more experienced person (graduate student in our context) benefits in a technology mentoring relationship. In addition, the resulting survey instrument provided along with this study is a valuable tool for those studying technology mentoring. The theoretical foundations, development process of the development of the instrument, and reliability and validity issues are discussed in detail. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.