Enhancing Skills through Distant Mentoring

按照传统做法，教育和培训都无法为许多人提供在快速变化的技术世界中成为生产性贡献者所需的理解水平和技能。该项目探讨了将辅导作为替代教学工具的概念，它可以弥合正规教育中强调的概念与工作场所所要求的能力之间的差距。我们认为辅导是一个动态的社会和教学过程，当学习者在某种活动的背景下发现问题时，就会启动。在项目的第一阶段，我们将研究工作场所的非正式指导和教育环境中的更有条理的指导。我们还将启动实验室研究，使用基于计算机的支助系统的第一个原型，使两个人能够在同一应用程序上工作，并规定参与者之间可以进行多媒体对话。这项工作将为开发指导过程的认知模型提供基础。该模型和第一阶段的研究结果将为远程导师的设计提供信息，对初始原型的改进不仅将为联网协作提供多媒体通信，而且还将支持特定的指导活动，如审查问题解决历史和生成解释。

Both education and training, as conventionally practiced, fail to provide many individuals with the level of understanding and skills needed to become productive contributors in a world of fast-changing technology. This project explores the concept of mentoring as an alternative instructional tool that can bridge the gap between the concepts stressed in formal education and the competencies required by the workplace. We view mentoring as a dynamic social and instructional process initiated when a learner detects a problem in the context of some activity. In the first phase of the project, we will study informal mentoring in the workplace and more structured mentoring in educational settings. We will also initiate laboratory studies, using the first prototype of a computer-based support system that enables two individuals to work on the same application with provisions for a multimedia dialogue between participants. This work will provide the basis for developing a cognitive model of the mentoring process. That model and the Phase 1 research results will inform the design of the Distant Mentor, refinement of the initial prototype that will provide not only multimedia communication for networked collaboration but also support for specific mentoring activities as reviewing problem solving histories and generating explanations.