Enhancing Skills through Distant Mentoring

传统的教育和培训都无法为许多个人提供在快速变化的技术世界中成为富有成效的贡献者所需的理解水平和技能。本项目探讨了指导作为一种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需能力之间的差距。我们将指导视为一个动态的社会和教学过程，当学习者在某些活动的背景下发现问题时，就会启动指导。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更结构化的指导。我们亦会展开实验室研究，使用首个以电脑为基础的支援系统原型，让两个人在同一应用程序上工作，并提供参与者之间的多媒体对话。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，改进初始原型，不仅为网络协作提供多媒体通信，而且还支持特定的指导活动，如回顾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.