Connecting theory and practice in mentor preparation: mentoring for the improvement of teaching and learning

As a group, entrepreneurs and small business managers require training which is specific to their skills gaps, and takes into account that they are geographically dispersed with limited time available for such activities. They also require training which is integrated with their business activities and sufficiently flexible to incorporate into their busy and changing schedules. Email potentially provides a means of delivering a training intervention which suits the particular training and learning needs of this growing group. In spite of the growth of development and delivery of e‐mentoring programs, there is limited academic research around structured e‐mentoring generally and, in particular, around the evaluation of online programs for professionals in the micro‐business and small to medium enterprise sector. Given this lag in the academic literature, this article aims to explore how e‐mentoring programs for this target group might be usefully evaluated by drawing on pedagogical discourse. Specifically, this article proposes an adaptation to a model for evaluating computer‐based education programs and applies this intepretative framework to an e‐mentoring scheme called Mentors Online with reference to other programs aimed at similar target groups. The adaptation provides a possible framework for grounding the evaluation of e‐mentoring programs and making explicit the theoretical and pedagogical basis of much of the literature to date. The Mentors Online program was developed and delivered in 2002 by an Australian employee association with a membership of around 25,000 professionals. The Mentors Online website is available at www.apesma.asn.au/mentorsonline