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School of Computing and Information Technology, Griffith University ... study direction and career choices by introducing the student to a personal guide who has ...
INTEGRATING MOBILE COMMUNICATION IN A STUDENT MENTORING PROGRAM Jonna Häkkilä*, Jenine Beekhuyzen** and Liisa von Hellens** School of Computing and Information Technology, Griffith University Nathan Campus, Nathan 4111, QLD, Australia

ABSTRACT Mentoring programs have been used to enlighten undergraduate university students with employment opportunities, study direction and career choices by introducing the student to a personal guide who has a similar study background, but has already graduated and is currently employed in the chosen industry. This research project introduces a case study of integrating novel mobile communication technologies into a mentoring program in a university environment. The technology equipment used in the case study involves mobile phones with camera and MMS functionality, which are given to the mentor and mentee to be used as a part of the mentoring process. Preliminary results suggest that integrating mobile communication technologies to the mentoring process increases the amount of communication between the participants and offers a better overall picture of the work, as it provides an ability to exchange visual information and thus an extra aspect to the communication. Intensified, more frequent and often more informal interactions between the participants can also result in a closer and relaxed relationship, allowing the possibility for deeper communication and a better learning atmosphere.

1. INTRODUCTION A remarkable amount of university students choose their area of study without preliminary experience in the chosen field. With information technology, the students also often have fairly faint, and often distorted idea what to expect in their studies or even after graduation. Somewhat unclear is the kind of employment their area of study can offer (Nielsen et al, 1999). Research suggests that university IT Degree programs are not attracting the high achieving students for a number of reasons; due to the low entrance level scores needed to enter the program, the attraction to highentrance level Degree programs such as medicine, law and psychology and the confusion and uncertainty relating to what a career in IT will entail (Greenhill et al, 1997). In addition to this, dropout rates of up to 50% have been observed in the transition from first year to second year studies in these courses. Consistent results have been obtained in studies concerning high school physics, which faces similar difficulties and biased ideas as IT (Häkkilä et al, 1998). University student mentoring has been introduced at a large Australian university to offer students insight into the IT industry and employment possibilities to provide them with a closer look at the everyday life of working in the field. When entering into the mentoring program, the student is matched with a personal mentor who has a similar educational background and is currently employed in industry. First year university students were chosen over secondary school students because of the dropout rate of first year university students, mentioned earlier. The authors believe that retaining first year students through to second and third year and completion is just as important as facilitating the transition from secondary school to university. Conventionally, mentoring is carried out with face-to-face meetings and e-mail conversations between mentor and mentee. Mobile communication technology offers a new tool to enhance the mentoring experience from the conventional approach, allowing the communication to take more diverse forms. The use of mobile communication technology offers flexibility in time management, as the participants often have different time schedules and can be geographically dispersed. When compared to e-mail, mobile phones have the advantage of being more easily accessed, as most people are used to carrying one at all times. Mobile phones and their messaging features are becoming more and more intertwined in the everyday lives of young people (Berg et al, 2003; Grinter and Eldridge, 2003), and thus provide a familiar and intuitive

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tool for educational communication. Employment of multimedia messaging (MMS) has increased the possibilities of educational communication considerably, since visual information can now be used for communication and sharing.

2. BACKGROUND An IT Mentoring program was established in 2001, which aimed to use mentors and role models from university and industry as a means of encouraging high-achieving secondary school students to consider IT a a viable career option. Continuing in 2003, the mentoring program involved first year information technology students and their mentors. Both mentors and mentees voluntarily participate into the program, and no financial benefits are obtained. Mentors go through a short training, after which each is introduced to her/his mentee. Mentor and the mentee meet on regular basis during one semester period, which they can arrange as suits best for both parties. A number of group get-together meetings and a final session is organised to gather together all program participants to discuss their experiences. In addition to face-to-face meetings, e-mail conversations have been reported to take place during the mentoring process.

Methodological Framework The Leadership framework (Klenke, 1996) is used in this continuing research to examine the elements of leadership that may affect the participation in a mentoring program in a university environment. The “leadership diamond” depicts the interdependencies between leadership, culture, gender and context - the high-level critical features. The following briefly outlines the framework adopted for this research to help to understand and interpret the benefits of the mentoring program. It is important to note that the success of this and any mentoring program will ultimately depend on the compatability between the mentor and mentee. Leadership style within the mentoring program may have a significant relationship with the success of the program (Parzinger et al, 2002). This refers to not only the leadership style of the mentor (how regularly they want to be contacted, their preferred method of contact etc) but also the leadership of the mentoring program overall. Effective mentoring one-on-one can have tremendous bearing on changing the perceptions of the mentee. If an interesting and dynamic work environment is not depicted, the mentee may feel that their perceptions are being reinforced rather than removed. Gender is an important aspect of the current IT mentoring project. Although IT education is less attractive to students in general, females tend to be noticeably under-represented. This is due in part to the construction of the IT as a male domain, whereas occupations such as teaching and nursing are considered more suitable for females. Other research indicates that when young women in high school are contemplating careers in engineering or computing, they often experience tensions, conflicts, and feelings of isolation (CCT, 2002). Female students attending secondary school tend to have negative impressions towards further studies and careers in a technical field, relating the technology field as a non-social and theoretic area with only a weak connection to everyday life (Häkkilä et al, 1998). A mentoring program can provide role models to dispel the negative stereotypes and highlight the positive aspects of being a woman working in the IT field. Numerous studies suggest that women in particular who have mentors report greater career success than those who don’t (Duff, 1999). Culture issues impact the perceptions of the IT profession, reflecting both society’s values and the subcultures within IT. This especially concerns female students as IT generally is perceived as masculine and not socially orientated field. The higher participation rate of female Asian students in an Australian university IT degree program indicates that the barriers inhibiting female participation can be overcome and useful lessons may be learnt and perhaps transformed into practice (Wilson, 2003). The motivations of Asian and non-Asian females in Australia to enter IT are significantly affected by different factors (von Hellens et al., 1999). The context where IT skills are learned is an essential motivation factor for students. If the skills are felt useful and potentially important in future career, the effort and time devoted to a topic is increased. The current mentoring program is attempting to change the perceptions of a career in IT by using cutting edge technologies to communicate. It is attempting to illustrate the range of social aspects to an IT career, as IT

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degree courses tend to be focus on the technical components, overshadowing the social side of computing (Nielsen, 1998). The existing mentoring literature has focussed mainly on mentoring programs within the workplace (Duff, 1999). The success of such programs depends on the level of support shown by the management of the organisation in which the program is being implemented. To the authors’ knowledge, the current mentoring project discussed in this paper employs a novel approach, which integrates the use of mobile communication to the mentoring process.

3. CASE: USING MOBILE TECHNOLOGIES IN MENTORING The pilot mentoring program was conducted with some of the participants being asked to use mobile communication technology as part of the mentoring process. The primary function of the experiment was to augment communication during the mentoring process. There was no aim to replace the conventional methods employed in the mentoring program, but to add value with features offered by the mobile communication device. Media used in communications between a mentor and mentee were short messages (SMS) and multimedia messages (MMS), the latter to be more common. Conversations consisted mainly of one message or a message or a reply, where the answer included feedback or comment to the previous messages. The typical number of sent messages was two per day from mentor to mentee, and one from mentee to the mentor. Although, more messages were exchanged if a message gave rise to a longer, more detailed conversation. The time for messaging was found to be altering from morning hours to past midnight and also during the weekends. The majority of messages contained of a short description of the work task mentor was currently involved in, accompanied by a picture. In addition to the actual task, the messages often described the atmosphere at that particular moment and also included short opinions. The second type of messages were not primarily related to the work tasks but described more the mentor’s character - free time, hobbies and personal preferences. The contents of messages sent by a mentee considered free time and references to studying, emphasis altering with the person. In their messages, mentees reported usual happenings during the day and draw an overall picture of their lifestyle and activities they were involved in everyday life. They also briefly commented on mentor’s messages –e.g. ‘ Sounds interesting’ or ‘ Good luck with your work!’. Questions occurred rarely, and when involved, they referred to previously received message asking more detailed information, for instance ‘Is that research for *** ?’ (***= company name). The initiative for conversation containing professional information was taken by the mentor, and was not motivated by e.g. a question from a mentee. However, mentees took initiative in reporting about their duties related to studying, for instance assignments and projects they were working on. Conversations related to free time were opened equally by both parties. MENTEES FEEDBACK: The mentees overall comments about the experiment were very positive and encouraging. The first impressions were enthusiastic, and they immediately took an active role in experimenting and trying out the equipment. Although all participants had a mobile phone, none had used one with camera (MMS) functionality before. After the one week experiment period, the mentees were asked to fill out a feedback questionnaire about the experience. The results obtained were positive and encouraging. The most positive effects were reported on increasing frequency of the communication, developing a closer relationship and gaining a deeper insight for the mentor work. Integration of mobile technology was felt to offer a valuable tool for mentoring program. As weaknesses, mentees mentioned the short time of the experiment period, and were suggesting it to be elongated from one to e.g. two weeks. This was argued by explaining that this would offer longer period of time to get use to both using the phone and the mode of communication. The suggestion of a longer experiment period is also supported when examining the messages, as the communication become relaxed towards the end of the week. The amount of credit was reported to be sufficient for one-week experiment

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period. The technical barriers notified were short battery time and lack of network coverage in some areas, which were described to limit the communication in some instances. MENTORS FEEDBACK: The feedback received from mentors was also positive towards the use of mobile communication technology as a part of the program. The experiment was regarded as useful and valuable for the mentoring process. Positive feedback was obtained from flexibility in regard to the place and time of the communication, ease of use, and the personal touch it gave to the conversations. A criticism was that if the use of mobile communications would be the only medium of interaction, the conversations between mentor and a mentee would remain too light and no deep knowledge or ’big picture’ would be obtained from the communication. Email and face-to-face are encouraged.. As recognised also in comments received, the employment of mobile communication was felt to add value as highlighting some aspects of the work, which may have otherwise been neglected or forgotten. As in mentees’ feedback, a wish for a longer lasting experiment period was also mentioned from mentors’ side, as one week was not considered to be a long enough time to cover the different aspects related to work. For instance, the experiment period could have contained unusual tasks or was lacking some elements, which the mentor considered as an important part of the job description.

4. CONCLUSION This paper has introduced an enhancement to student mentoring by employing the use of mobile communication technology into a program which was held among first year information technology students. The study was implemented by giving mentor- mentee pairs mobile phones with camera and MMS functionality, which they were advised to use for communication with each others over one week period. The addition of visual information in to the communication in a form of multimedia messaging was recommended in the guidance of the participants. The results show that integrating mobile communication into mentoring process has value to the program, enhances the mentoring experience and is regarded as a valuable tool in the communication between the mentor and mentee (student). The most praised areas of the program include the increased frequency and flexibility in communication, which are highly valued because of the time constrains of both mentor and mentee. Mentors emphasised also the easy access and speed of the use, as sending a message with mobile phone was regarded as more easy and flexible than e-mail, which took more time and was limited to the work situations with a PC. Both parties reported on the development of a deeper personal relationship and relaxed communication between mentor and mentee over time. Including visual information to the messaging in a form of MMS, new aspects of both mentor’s work and her/his lifestyle were highlighted. Generally, mobile communication technology was found to offer a valuable tool for a mentoring program as a supporting tool of communication. The results encourage the authors to continue the employment of mobile communication into mentoring to enhance the information exchanged between mentor and mentee. Continuing and future research in this area includes the continuation of the study using both MMS and conventional styles, with improvements according to feedback received from this pilot phase concerning a number of issues such as the time period devoted to the experiment. The aim is to increase the amount of participants from a current, relatively small sample to larger number of mentee-mentor pairs and to attempt to measure the benefits of the program.

REFERENCES Berg, S., Taylor, A. S. and Harper, R., 2003. Mobile Phones for the Next Generation: Device Design for Teenagers. CHI Letters, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 433-440. CCT – Centre for Children & Technology, 2002. Telementoring young women in engineering and computing: Providing the vital link, National Science Foundation, [on-line] http://www2.edc.org/CCT/projects_summary.asp?numProjectId=771 Accessed: 2/9/03 Duff, C., 1999. Learning from other women: How to benefit from the knowledge, wisdom, and experience of female mentors, American Management Association, New York.

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Grinter R.E. and Eldridge, M, 2003. Wan2tlk?:Everyday Text Messaging, CHI Letters, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 441-448. Greenhill, A. von Hellens, L., Nielsen, S. and Pringle, R., 1997. Collaborative Practices and Computer Games: Towards a New Perspective on the Participation of Women in IT Education. Proceedings of the 4th Australasian Women in Computing Workshop, Melbourne, Australia, pp. 57-62. Häkkilä, J. et al, 1998. Tytot, pojat ja fysiikka. Lukiolaisten käsityksiä fysiikasta oppiaineena. University of Oulu, Finland. Abstract in English: Girls, Boys and Physics Klenke, K., 1996. Women and leadership: A contextual perspective. Springer Publishing, New York. Nielsen, S. H., von Hellens, L., Pringle, R. and Greenhill, A, 1999. Students’ Perceptions of Information Technology Careers. Conceptualising the Influence of Cultural and Gender Factors for IT Education. GATES (Greater Access to Technology Education and Science) Journal, Vol 5, No. 1, pp. 30-38. Nielsen, S. H. von Hellens, L.A., Greenhill, A. and Pringle, R., 1998. Conceptualising the Influence of Cultural and Gender Factors on Students’ Perception of IT Studies and Careers. Proceedings of the 1998 ACM SIGCPR Conference. Boston, USA, pp. 86-95 . Parzinger, M. J. et al, 2002. Examining the Effect of the Transformational Leader on Software Quality, Software Quality Journal, Vol 9, pp. 253-267. von Hellens, L. Nielsen, S., Doyle, R. and Greenhill, A., 1999. Bridging the IT Skills Gap. A Strategy to Improve the Recruitment and Success of IT Students. Proceedings of the 10th Australasian Conference on Information Systems. Wellington, New Zealand, pp. 1129-1143. Wilson, M., 2003. Making nursing visible? Gender, technology and the care plan as script. Information Technology and People, Vol 15, No 2, pp. 139-158.

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