Facilitating Learning and Knowledge Transfer through Mentoring
Ileana Hamburg
Institut Arbeit und Technik, WH Gelsenkirchen, Gelsenkirchen, Germany
Keywords: Mentoring, Social Media, Web-based Platforms, Communities.
Abstract: Mentoring is a human resources development process supporting learning and knowledge transfer. Social
media and Web services can be used for learning, communication with mentors and monitoring bringing
also other advantages. In this paper formal and informal mentoring aspects and the use of IT in mentoring
particularly social media and Web support will be shortly presented. Examples of projects where besides
knowledge transfer, formal, informal learning also learning in a Web-based community is used are outlined.
1 INTRODUCTION
Mentoring is a human resources development
process supporting learning and knowledge transfer
– KT (Argote and Ingram, 2000). It can be organized
to address aspects like knowledge gaps and shortage
skills (Hamburg and Marian, 2012). Mentoring, is
commonly used to describe a KT and learning
process in which an existing staff member or an
external one guides new comers or less-experienced
people in a task and helps to develop professional
skills, attitudes and competencies (Johnson and
Ridley, 2008; Edelkraut and Graf, 2011). Mentoring
is a complex process involving not just guidance and
suggestion, but also the development of autonomous
skills, judgments, personal and professional master
ship, expertise, trust and self-confidence over the
time (Richert, 2006; Breipohl and Hamburg, 2011).
The nature of mentoring is “friendly”, “collegially”.
Relationships within mentoring processes are
often divided in informal and formal ones. In the
next part we will give some characteristics as well as
advantages and disadvantages of these two types.
Due to mentoring effectiveness for developing
more productive staff, many organisations are
interested to support it. Some examples of
professional contexts in which mentoring can take
place are induction programmes to maximise the
graduate´s learning, continuous professional
development supporting professionals to develop
new skills and gain additional experience and
knowledge, career development, outplacement
helping individuals (particularly some with special
needs) to integrate into work or to make transitions
in new forms of employment, changing management
or at implementing a learning organisation.
Informal learning accounts for over 75% of the
individuals and companies learning processes, it is
necessary to support the use of this form of learning
more efficiently also in the mentoring, counselling
and coaching and to combine it with new IT
services. Strategies using intensively informal
learning, e-Learning, mentoring and new IT media,
embedded into business and work processes in
companies, responding not only to requirements of
work/career but also to employees interests and
supporting collaboration, knowledge sharing and
performance should be developed.
According to organizations using mentoring,
social media can be used for communication with
mentors and monitoring bringing also other advanta-
ges. The use of social media support social learning;
forums, blogs, virtual market places, extend face-to-
face traditional mentoring allowing mentoring to
take place over distance and in different time
periods. This approach supports also not only infor-
mal but also formal mentoring, more accepted by the
organizations because they see direct benefits
making also possible that more mentees are
mentored.
In this paper formal and informal mentoring
aspects and the use of IT in mentoring particularly
social media and Web support (O´Reilly, 2005) will
be shortly presented
Example of projects where besides KT, formal
and informal learning also learning in a Web-based
community (Wenger et al., 2002) is used, are
outlined.
219
Hamburg I..
Facilitating Learning and Knowledge Transfer through Mentoring.
DOI: 10.5220/0004335702190222
In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2013), pages 219-222
ISBN: 978-989-8565-53-2
Copyright
c
2013 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
2 FORMS OF MENTORING
The range of mentoring relationships is a continuum
going from informal mentoring to formal, highly
structured and planned mentoring.
Informal mentoring is created spontaneously
or is initiated by special interest i.e. when the mentee
could be a potential employee. An informal
mentoring relation can be required by a mentee who
approaches a mentor for his/her intentions.
Some characteristics:
• Goals of the relationship are not completely
specified
• Outcomes could not be measured in totality
• The process of KT cannot be explicitly described
and it is based on the ability and willing for this
process
• Access is limited and could be exclusive
• Mentors and mentees are often selected on the
basis of personal chemistry that means an initial
connection or attraction between
• Mentoring lasts a long time
• The organization benefit indirectly, as the focus
is exclusively on the mentee.
Some advantages are a relationship of trust and res-
pect between the partners, high degree of compati-
bility and cooperation and flexibility of the relation.
This kind of relationship has a risk of ambiguity and
tension when it becomes too intensive and there are
rare possibility to be applied to groups. The most
used form of learning in this context is an informal
one. Social networks support this type of mentoring.
Formal mentoring is often facilitated and
supported by the organisation which makes also
tools available to participants for an efficient pro-
cess.
Some characteristics are:
• Goals are established from the beginning by the
organization, men-tors and mentees
• Outcomes are measured
• Knowledge which has to be transferred is known
at the beginning
• Access is open to all who meet the criteria
established by the organization for the
corresponding mentoring program
• Mentors and mentees are paired based on
compatibility
• Organisation and employees can benefit directly.
Aspects as the difficulties by paring with the risk
of poor one and less flexibility of relationships
between mentor and mentees and of the mentoring
process are disadvantages. Formal mentoring
relationships are more suitable for using e-Learning
and Web-based systems can support formal
mentoring. The type of appropriate mentoring for an
organisation depends on its business and
qualification needs, on the needs of mentees. The
success will depend on whether the parties involved
in the mentoring process have the skills required and
if the context of the organisation is supportive.
3 SOCIAL LEARNING
ENVIRONMENTS AND
WEB-BASED SUPPORTED
MENTORING
IT platforms supporting social networks can be
considered as tools for KT, ways to store organisa-
tion knowledge and spaces where employees share
knowledge and guide colleagues. One disadvantage
of existing social learning platforms is that they do
not support a synchronous communication. Web
facilities as moderated forums, wikis, and blogs
improve the mentoring process in this context. Web-
based supported mentoring in networks and a
platform by using social media has benefits:
• Provision of a 24 hour access of saved know-
ledge, for training material and communication
• Accessible anywhere with internet availability
• Provision of a platform even if face-to-face
communication is not possible
• Learning assessment and progress monitoring of
the mentor/mentee relationship
• Accounting for different learning abilities of
mentees
• Overcoming limitations in time or space etc. of
traditional training environments
• Reducing limitations of the classroom
• Allowing the learner to work at his or her own
space, speed and depth with structured support
from both, the educators and the other learners.
Important aspects for a successful mentoring process
are trust and the depth of relationships. Face-to-face
interaction and socialization processes consolidate
the relations between members and group member-
ship. Trust is important for KT and this develops
primarily through face-to-face interactions so
traditional elements of monitoring/mentoring have to
be affiliated (Eby and Allen, 2008). A constant
presence of experienced and qualified mentors in the
Web-based platform is required. The platform
should support motivation and retain students in the
learning process and a real mentoring and not be
understood as a supervisory tool.
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4 EXAMPLES
One European project within Leonardo da Vinci
programme is Net Knowing 2.0: Web 2.0
Technologies and Net Collaborating Practices to
support learning in European SMEs
(www.netknowing.com). It aims to support KT in
European SMEs by using informal learning, net-
working and mentoring and to help them to turn
their daily work into a source of corporate learning.
Within the project we discussed with SMEs
about introducing a mentoring system facilitating
performance and KT, supporting retention and
leadership development. Mentoring is less used in
Germany. Within a workshop with German
representatives of SMEs some tactics for
implementing a mentoring program in their
companies have been discussed. One possible
approach is that experienced in Brandenburg. The
mentors are external persons who should support the
sustainable development and advancement of
strategic competences of SMEs through informal
and formal learning. Potential learning consultants
can be trained to act as mentors. Some companies
decided to try this concept and also to use company
staff as mentors for 1-2 mentees with disabilities
who will work for the company. In this case
informal mentoring will be used and the KT will be
very beneficial for the mentee in the own career but
and also for the mentor. At the workshop, SMEs
from Germany proposed a route map for the
successful deployment of a mentoring program
within the specific context of a SME environment:
• Putting the specific working environment into
context.
• Researching the role played by the organisational
culture or “climate” in the development,
maintenance and success of the SME.
• Determining real qualification needs of the staff
before starting the mentoring process.
• Determining the knowledge gaps and which of
them can be minimised by a mentoring system.
• Demonstrating that a mentoring intervention has
real benefits in this context and not being
bureaucratic.
• Being a process based on trust, experience,
supervision, formal and informal learning.
• Identifying barriers to mentoring/coaching.
• Determining issues to be incorporated within the
mentoring/coaching intervention, for success.
• Qualifying coaches and mentors for different
forms of working and learning.
This map is considered in the future mentoring
activities in Germany. A learning suite has been
developed including a training module for mentors.
The module which has been required by SME
representatives and other users of the learning suite
has been translated in German to be used in further
mentoring processes in Germany. The few
mentoring activities carried out till now in Germany
have been positively evaluated by companies,
colleagues and mentees. More moderated forums
have been required.
Figure 1: Learning suite.
Another project is Diversity and Mentoring
Approaches to Support Active Ageing and
Integration DIMENSAAI (www. dimensaai.eu)
starting end 2012 and coordinated by the author. By
transferring a mentoring model from former projects
to Germany and other partners, the consortium
wants to improve participation in training and
particularly on the job qualification and employment
for two target groups: seniors and people with
disabilities by the use of a diversity and mentoring
model focusing on the working places in the health
and care sectors (having skill shortage). Activities
planned are the organization of focus group
discussions to identify requirements for working
places suitable for these groups and needs for
mentoring, the transfer, adaptation and test of a
mentor training model and developing a catalogue
with competencies for mentors, workshops in
health/ care sector and other interested organizations
for explaining diversity, tests of mentoring processes
on the job in the partner countries involving seniors
and/or disabled persons, social networking.
In both projects social networking of mentors,
FacilitatingLearningandKnowledgeTransferthroughMentoring
221
mentees and other experts is supported by an IT
platform developed by using TiKi Wiki (Wikipedia,
2012). Tiki is an open source, Web-based appli-
cation, offering collaboration, publishing, com-
merce, social networking. In Net Knowing 2.0 the
platform (cop.netknowing.eu) is connected with
learning suite, particularly with mentor module.
The following figure shows the social platform
(www.platform.dimensaai.eu) offering also training
for mentors and diversity counsellors within
DIMENSAAI project.
Figure 2: DIMENSAAI platform.
5 CONCLUSIONS
In the last years nature and perception of mentoring
have changed being more based on equality. Aspects
that we considered till now in our projects for
making mentoring a successful process i.e. to open
new horizons for mentee without imposing mentor
own agenda, adapt the mentoring style to mentee
needs, supporting mentees to help themselves,
reflect critically and known own limitations and
boundaries and asking feedback from mentees.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This paper describes work within the transfer inno-
vation projects Net Knowing 2.0 and DIMENSAAI
partially supported by the European Leonardo da
Vinci LLP.
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