Structured Mentorship: Guiding Students through the Academic Writing and Research Processes

Abstract

Over three semesters, researchers created a mentoring model to increase autonomous student research, model thesis/dissertation writing, and increase student’s topical knowledge. To do this, instructors scaffold the writing and research process to individually guide a student through his/her individual challenges by addressing discrete performance issues. This involves the students selecting a topic, researching that topic, and producing five related papers under instructor mentorship and guided by a rubric set. This paper compares non- and mentored student writing to show the dynamic evolution a student can undergo through an instructor’s structured mentorship. In this model, students’ performance consistently demonstrated an increase in quality, even under greater demands for production, additional material, and a larger amount of integrated research indicating a positive average growth in the student’s ability in both production as well as skill. The significance in students’ production is exemplified by the following: students produced a total of 189 refined and polished pages (24-52 pages per student) over 140 (5.6 average) revisions in a progressively increasing production quantity – students began producing 2-3 pages and ended creating 7-17 pages for final projects.