1Center for Biomedical Informatics and 2Faculty of Medical Sciences, State University of Campinas, Campinas, Brazil.
Networking technologies such as the Internet are radically
changing the way people interact. Access to knowledge
is changing in an irreversible way and is destroying traditional
barriers of space and time. The instant and constant
availability of authors, teachers and scientists via the Internet makes
possible that anyone can learn independently
of his or her level of education or formal enrollment in courses or
schools. However, in order to do this in an
efficient manner, many times direct mentor-to-pupil advice and
counseling is required; and technology has many
ways of providing them at a distance. Our aim in the present work was
to explore the possibilities of a free telementoring
service to readers of "Brain
& Mind" magazine, an electronic
publication on neurosciences available on the WWW since 1997
(http://www.epub.org.br/cm), using common electronic
mail, due to its advantages as an asynchronous interaction tool and its
overall availability, low cost and ease
of use. Many types of readers and demands for telementoring were
observed during one year of availabilty, ranging
from high school students seeking advice for science fair projects, to
undergraduate and graduate students in need
of professional orientation, from many countries. The mentors answered
the questions and started an e-mail dialogue
in order to meet the student's demands. Literature searches and
referral to other, more specialized mentors, were
required some times. We report here a qualitative analysis of results
and critically evaluate the usefulness and
features related to telementoring and make recommendations for its
future use in virtual e-learning communities
in the neurosciences.
Keywords: Internet, WWW, distance education,
neuroscience, electronic publications, mentoring
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