Exploring Emerging Mentoring Practices in New Ecosystems of Learning in Finland

In this paper we examine the kinds of mentoring models and practices employed in Finnish higher education and working-life to support continuous skill development, focusing especially on the working-life-centric digital mentoring of students. The theme interviews at 11 HE institutions and four enterprises were conducted as part of an eAMK project. The results show that classical and new implementations are employed in mentoring in HE and the workplace. While traditional pair mentoring continues to be the most widely used mentoring model, group and cross mentoring are increasingly utilised. Likewise, an agile combination of different mentoring models is identified as a feature of emerging mentoring practices. Digitalisation is increasingly part of the examined mentoring implementations and in HE especially trials are carried out to develop digital mentoring. Emerging learning ecosystems call for mentoring that is agile, adaptable and digitally accessible. We also examine the viable features and development needs of the presented mentoring models, especially from the perspective of digital devices. [For the complete proceedings, see ED601080.]