Sloan-C Effective Practice: Florida State University's Online Mentors

Florida State University's Office of Distributed and Distance Learning (ODDL) created a mentor program to provide more effective student support services. The program was created in response to unacceptably high withdrawal rates in distance learning courses due to students’ feelings of isolation, and to online faculty fears that there were too many students for them to handle preparation, instruction, monitoring, communication, and evaluation effectively.

FSU's ODDL believed that mentors would provide an appropriate level of distance and detachment from the institution, the instructor, and coursemates. Additionally, mentors would be better able to relate to the online learning population with its different demographic characteristics.