An online mentoring system for higher learning institutions

Abstract

Mentoring is the process whereby an experienced person guides and supports a younger or less experienced person in an educational institution. Mentoring in higher learning institutions helps learners acclimate to new academic topics, increases likelihood of academic support, and reduces weakness. The current practice used by many higher learning institutions for example Strathmore University is that upon joining a mentor is assigned to each student. The student then schedules a session and has a meeting with the mentor. This hinders an effective mentoring process as students lack information on mentoring, difficult to have a follow up on the mentoring sessions, analysis and report on mentoring program. These challenges can be overcome by developing an online mentoring system. The system allows mentors and mentees to schedule meetings and set milestones that will track the progress of the mentee to ensure confidentiality and provide reports on the mentoring sessions. The system is however not meant to completely get rid of face-to-face mentoring sessions but to complement the face-to-face mentoring as in some instances people would want to meet their mentor. An object-oriented approach has been used to develop a system to improve the mentoring process. The approach that has been used is the prototyping framework to ensure the system was developed iteratively