Linking learners: Structuring a mentoring via telecommunications course

To provide college writers with a rich experience in detecting, diagnosing, and analyzing writers' problems, we designed a mentoring via telecommunications course. Via telecommunications technology, secondary-school students sent university mentors copies of writing assignments and mentors provided feedback on how the writing and the students' writing processes could be improved. In this article, we provide a model for designing similar courses by discussing our course design and goals, the technology and logistics of the course, mentor training, and mentor strategies. From our experiences, we suggest that future mentoring courses should consider the power struggles that occur between secondary-school and university environments.