Best practices for developing a virtual peer mentoring community

Abstract

This paper describes an approach for creating a virtual community for peer mentoring and provides insight, in the form of best practices, on how engineering faculty can elicit support through cross-institutional mentoring. The value of a virtual, peer-mentoring community is providing support that may be otherwise unavailable at one's institution; it can also minimize negative impacts that may be associated with institutional power dynamics. The best practices described herein are informed by six early-career engineering education faculty that developed and participated in a virtual community of practice over the last two years. We will describe best practices for identifying a shared vision, developing possible tangible outcomes, writing operating procedures, selecting an appropriate platform for communication, and facilitating reflection and changes to practice.