Faculty Professional Learning: An Examination of Online Development and Assessment Environments - Teaching through Multi-User Virtual Environments - page 76

or groups of people mentoring each other…
The group shares experiences, challenges
and opportunities for the purpose of creat-
ing solutions” (Darwin & Palmer, 2009,
p. 126). The experience of such circles at
the universities of South of Australia and
Adelaide took on a topic-based learning
approach. Also, eleven key themes emerged
from the content analysis of focus group
responses and reflective statements from a
study at the University of Sydney: “Pairing
process, entry participation barriers-rec-
ognition and time, ongoing participation
barrier-time, participation incentives-re-
wards, cultural compatibility, gender, goals,
outcomes-intended and unintended, nature
of relationships, structure of program, and
mentoring agreement” (Ewing et al., 2008,
p. 299). Mentoring circles worked for those
who felt comfortable in a collaborative group
environment. Supporting the notion that
mentorship is an effective strategy for FPL, a
large body of theory and research focused on
the importance of faculty members' profes-
sional communities, characterized by shared
norms of collegiality and support values. As
an example, we choose as most suitable the
following statement: “Developing a learning
community for tenured faculty intending
to assist untenured faculty” (Greene et al.,
2008, p. 439). A mentor framework oper-
ates in most cases as a development course.
Therefore, the recruitment and selection
of mentors and mentees would occur over
several training sessions comprising:
a. An information session introducing
the aims, objectives and concept of a
faculty mentoring project.
b. A half-day professional development
workshop to establish a shared under-
standing of mentoring and to facilitate
some relationship-building between
potential mentors and mentees.

c. A process for developing mentee-
mentor dyads (Ewing et al., 2008).
(3) Mentor training for senior faculty members .
A desirable function of the head of the depart-
ment is to initiate the mentoring relationship
in his or her department: “Chairs need to cre-
ate awareness of interdisciplinary teaching,
research, and service opportunities” (Bower,
2007, p. 82). Also, department heads are
in charge of sharing information with col-
leagues who have different personalities,
values and motives from themselves. Thus,
FPL under a mentoring framework should
consider cultural supports from higher edu-
cation institutions. As researchers, we have
been involved in a faculty mentoring project
for improving teaching staff. In particular,
given that our study was grounded within
the context of implementing an e-mentoring
programme, we applied a three-phase pro-
cess: (a) planning, (b) organization and (c)
assessment with faculty members of two
universities from the Canary Islands: La
Laguna (ULL) and Las Palmas de Gran
Canaria (LPGC), who acted as mentors
and reciprocally as protégés. In that study,
participants were located in two different
islands and their personal testimonials were
evidences of successful mentoring (Villar &
Alegre, 2006a).
(4) Mentorship of women and minorities in
academia . In formal mentoring programs,
the two Canary Islands universities involved
are committed to the value of computer
conferencing systems when meeting face-
to-face (f2f) is impractical. Unfortunately,
junior faculty, such as women and minorities,
are more likely to view online mentoring
programs as unsafe, rather than supportive,
to career development. Through the de-
velopment of a peer mentoring paradigm,
some academic members are changing
their beliefs. Thus, 'graduate teaching as-
sistants (GTAs) rate mentoring as the most