Using scenarios to train peer mentors online

In 2007, a wholly-online Bachelor of Early Childhood Education degree was introduced into James Cook University School of Education's suite of pre-service teacher preparation programs. The online degree provides access and opportunity for (predominantly) women in the childcare or associated fields to gain qualifications as a teacher. The majority of students in the first and subsequent years of the program are mature-aged women with significant family and work commitments and have had little prior opportunity to engage in online technologies or in further education opportunities. The university has had a very successful face-to-face Peer Mentoring Program (PMP) for almost 20 years. Given the success of the existing PMP, academics, learning advisers and mentors were anxious to provide appropriate and timely support to these virtual students' transition, success and retention. The PMP recruits potential mentors within programs. Initially, mentors in the PMP for online students were those who had been trained on-campus for mentoring on-campus students. This chapter outlines how scenario-based learning was used in the development and implementation of an online PMP training program. [Author abstract]