Educational Use of E-mentoring to Encourage Women into Science and Engineering

An important emerging area of Internet use for education is electronic mentoring or e-mentoring. The Internet provides an ideal communication medium that is both broad and flexible enough to provide unique opportunities for students and mentors. Today, women workers represent a minority in the fields of science and engineering. In Korea, a government sponsored pilot program Women into Science and Engineering (WISE) was begun in 2001 at Ewha Womans University to encourage female students at all school levels to pursue careers in science and engineering. Within the WISE program, an e-mentoring pilot study based on a bulletin board system was developed and tested as an educational tool for encouraging female students. The following conclusions were determined from the pilot study. While the survey of students indicated a positive response to the e-mentoring program, analysis of the bulletin board data revealed that less than half of the students actively participated in the program. The study suggests that e-mentoring programs require more than just a technical and administrative framework to be a success. It requires an active and constant feedback system to ensure that everyone is participating in the program.