How Do Students Choose a (Virtual) Mentor? Insights From an Interactive Virtual Career Fair

• In Event: Friday Roundtable Session 4:55 pm
  In Roundtable Session: AI and Virtual Mentoring (Table 39)

Abstract

Mentoring is considered a key practice promoting the persistence of students from under-represented and underserved in STEM. However, what makes a good mentor-mentee match and how this match is influenced by perceived or actual similarities between mentors and mentees are still being explored. This project explored how college students (N = 252) at a large Hispanic-Serving Institution chose potential mentors on an online virtual mentoring platform that showcased conversational, video-based virtual agent-mentors (‘virtual mentors’) representing real-life STEM professionals in a career fair style platform. Both quantitative and write-in data were analyzed to explore how such factors as shared demographic similarities and perceptions of the (virtual) mentor influenced the types of information the students learned by interacting with their virtual mentor.

Authors

• Yuko Okado, California State University - Fullerton

• Benjamin D. Nye, University of Southern California

• Angelica Aguirre, California State University - Fullerton

• Bill Swartout, University of Southern California