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January 1, 1997
The Telementoring Project: Taking a Look at Diversity Online
By Naomi Hupert
Is Diversity Invisible Online?
One of the most common perceptions about electronic
communication is that it is genderless, raceless, and ageless. Senders of e-mail are not
seen, and their physical attributes are invisible. As a result, many people believe that
e-mail communication is bias-free and can break down barriers that exist in face-to-face
communication. Is this actually the case? In 1993, the staff at the Center for Children
and Technology (CCT) began work on “Telementoring Young Women in Science, Engineering
and Computing,” an experimental project funded by the National Science Foundation and
designed to link high school women who were pursuing the sciences, engineering, and
computing to adult women mentors via the Internet. Our experience with the telementoring
project, where students and mentors are encouraged to share their personal, work, and
academic lives, showed us that diversity is highly visible online and can play a key role
in the design and success of a project when staff and participants are tuned into its
strengths.
 Community Involvement in the Project
In three years the telementoring project has reached 20 schools and
close to 500 students in seven states, including New York, Alabama, Tennessee, Iowa,
Colorado, New Mexico, and Oregon. The mentors participating in this project are
professional women at all levels of work experience, working in a variety of scientific
and technical fields. They hail from all regions within the United States as well as from
Australia, Canada, England, and Japan. Urban, rural, and suburban locations are
represented in this group of mentors and student, as are a diverse population that
includes Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, Asians, African Americans, Anglos, and
Latinas. Issues of diversity, which have been addressed both directly through online
discussion lists and indirectly through example, have played an important role in bringing
this online mentoring community together.
How Do Participants “See” Diversity Online?
As members of the telementoring project, students and mentors are
included in online listservs from which they interact with peers (students talk with other
students in a student lounge, and mentors talk with other mentors in a mentor lounge), and
in one-on-one mentoring relationships via electronic mail; the conversations can go on for
several months. Because the premise of the telementoring project is that it brings
students and adults together to talk about issues that are personal, such as decisions
about one’s future career or family influences on academics or post-high school
choices, participants must be prepared to listen to and respect life choices that may be
very different from their own. During these discussions, issues around differences in
culture, class, region, language, religion, and race all come to the surface as
participants begin to describe their own life experiences and how they came to their
career hopes and decisions. In addressing these issues, project staff members developed a
discussion structure that was designed to encourage multiple viewpoints and thus open up
the community to diversity.
The Importance of Diversity to Project Success
High school is a time when many students feel isolated and overwhelmed
by the choices they have to make when they graduate. Young women who have pursued science
or computing classes report that they feel particularly isolated in these classes because
they are often in the minority in these areas, and rarely do they find support to pursue
these fields. This situation is exacerbated when these are women of color. Many women who
come to the program have limited interaction with adults outside their immediate family
and teachers, and often they are unprepared to ask for help in a way that is useful to
them. At the same time, mentors who come to a project expecting to help isolated students
find guidance and support often forget that the student may have much different
experiences and expectations than their own. Helping and preparing the mentors and
students to see one another as individuals with differing strengths, interests, and
histories is critical to developing a mentoring relationship.
The Structure of Online Trainings
A key element in the telementoring project is online training for both
mentors and students. Although these trainings vary significantly in their content, they
each provide, through modeling by the online facilitator, a way of communicating via
e-mail that is clear, includes evidence of an individual’s personality, and is
acknowledging and supportive of individual differences. Facilitators identify common
pitfalls, such as misunderstandings that result from differences in the way ideas are
expressed or because normal and taken-for-granted conversational visual cues are missing.
For mentors, the trainings incorporate a series of scenarios that engage participants by
having them respond to a hypothetical student situation:
During the interview, the interviewer asked the student if she wished to
talk to a mentor about a variety of topics, one of which was self-esteem. The young woman
responded: "Self-image and self-confidence, I don't have any of that so I don't think
that would be very important to me."
- How would you respond to this young woman?
- What would you say first?
- How DOES one help build self-confidence and esteem? Does it have to
happen at the moment the young person brings it up? What happens if you wait?
There are several ways to approach this discussion. You can role play,
think of your own experiences or young women you have met, previous mentoring experiences,
or anything that you find helpful. The point is to help each other build viable strategies
for addressing these issues On-Line with students.
During online trainings, participants raise such issues as family
status, academic choices, religion, ethnic background, economic concerns, personal
histories, and regional issues. With each topic comes the potential for bias or
disagreement, but by providing a forum where individuals can share this information in an
environment that supports variety--and identifies it as a key factor for
success--participants can become aware of, and more comfortable with, one another’s
differences.
“My Mentor Doesn’t Understand the Way We Talk Here in Tennessee”
Issues of appropriate online behavior, correct grammar, choice of
vocabulary, stated social and academic preferences and practices, and differences in
economic status all figured large in discussions and sometimes heated disagreements
between this project’s participants. Students especially were sensitive to the often
unintentional bias evident in the posting of a peer or mentor. One exchange between
students over preferences for cheerleading led to this posting:
“About the cheerleading thing and all of that, our teacher said it
may be sort of a North/South thing. Most of us are from Alabama or Tennessee except for N.
[who is from the North]. It may be that we just have a different way of communicating or a
different level of rude. It may seem kind of rude to us, but maybe not to N.”
A program that incorporates these issues throughout its design can help
participants address the diversity that becomes apparent through online conversations. A
program design that includes the following can guide participants in what to expect as
members of the project and can offer guidance and direction when confronted with
difference and diversity:
- acknowledging multiple differences among participants
- stating the inclusion of diverse opinions and people as a goal of the
project
- designing program materials to invite multiple perspectives
- facilitating online discussions in ways that affirm, validate, and direct
conversation.
By acknowledging that differences exist, by informing all participants
that others with varying experiences are taking part in the project, and by taking action
as needed to diffuse a discussion, online diversity can play both a visible and positive
role by broadening the perspectives of all those involved in the experience.
Telementoring Pioneers: This is the first group of
students with whom we worked.
Naomi Hupert is Mentor Liaison at the Center for Children
and Technology in New York City; CCT is part of Education Development Center, Inc., which
is located in Newton, Massachusetts. The telementoring project’s staff includes
Project Director Dorothy Bennett, Content Developer Terri Meade, and Implementation
Liaison Kallen Tsikalas.
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