Active mentor - core activities

Mentor and mentee matching

Once a new cohort of participants start, you will be matched to an EdTA participant (a.k.a., mentee). There are many mentors and mentees with differing availabilities and preferences within the scheme, and sometimes this process will take a week or two to get right. Once paired, our EdTA team will send an introduction email to connect both mentor and mentees. EdTA participants are asked to lead the initial introduction actions, like saying hello and arranging a meet-up with their mentors. 

In rare cases, participants and mentors might be mismatched for a variety of reasons. We recommend that you meet with your mentee first before seeking a change, but, if you feel that you can’t work with them, please do reach out to the EdTA team (confidentially) to explain why it’s not a good pairing. We will do our best to try and find a new person for you. However, the scheme is under high demand, and we can’t promise that all mentor-mentee matches will be with your ideal working partner. 

Expectations and responsibilities

Here we share our mentoring expectations and responsibilities.

All mentioned downloadable documents, event bookings, and links to recordings are provided at:

• EdTA Mentor documents
• EdTA Mentor events and recording

Key expectations

• To be kind, respectful, and supportive of your mentee(s)
• To be well informed of the professional standards framework and the guidelines of the EdTA submission and assessment process

Key responsibilities

• Attend the ‘Introduction to EdTA Mentoring’ live session. 
• Read the EdTA Mentor Handbook and the Advance HE Professional Standard Framework (PSF).
• Download and read the submission form and supporting statement template to understand what and how a participant will submit their work. 
• Meet with and correspond with your mentee on a quarterly basis. 
• Read and provide written feedback on a completed draft of your mentees’ work 
• Receive ongoing mentoring training, by attending an EdTA Mentors Updates meeting, once per year. 

Here are some additional recommended actions that you can do to enhance your mentoring practice:

• Read the ‘Guide to the PSF Dimensions’ (Advance HE guides) for the fellowship category your mentee(s) are working towards
• Read the exemplars of past successful awardees 
• Read our guidance on ‘Good evidence’ and ‘Evaluating your teaching and support for learning’ to support mentees ability to critically evaluate their practice.
• View the additional video materials on our EdTA Media Hopper channel 
• Ask and respond to questions with the other EdTA participants, mentors, and assessors on our Microsoft Teams channels. 

What is not your responsibility as an EdTA mentor?

• You are not responsible for the outcome of a mentee’s fellowship submission
• You are not responsible for a mentee’s level of commitment
• You are not a co-author of their submission

Workload

A common question asked by mentors and mentees, is, ‘how much time should I spend working with my mentor/mentee?’. Each mentoring relationship will be unique, but we do recommend that most mentors plan to spend roughly 15 hours over the course of the relationship. This 15 hours includes meeting together (in-person or virtually; typically 3 to 5 times) and reading and providing written feedback to someone’s work. Some mentees will require more time and some will require less. If someone is seeking larger amounts of time from you, please get in touch with us, so that we can steer them towards all of the central supports that we have available.