e-mentoring Activities in Online Programming Communities: An Empirical Study on Stack Overflow

Elham Kariri, Carlos Rodríguez

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

Mentoring is widely acknowledged as an effective method for professional and academic development. The advances in the area of Information Technologies (IT) have positively impacted the mentoring process through a more technology-mediated form of mentoring known as e-mentoring or online mentoring. This form of mentoring has particularly had a great impact in improving learning opportunities in the context of online communities where mentors and mentees from around the world interact with each other in a mutually beneficial collaboration and learning experience. In this paper, we focus on online programming communities and we aim at identifying and understanding e-mentoring activities carried out in this context. We performed a qualitative study on a sample of 400 Q&A threads (i.e., questions and their corresponding answers) from Stack Overflow and identified a total of 31 different activities organized into 10 categories of activities. The results of our study provide insights into the e-mentoring activities performed in Stack Overflow, which can benefit both researchers and practitioners interested in understanding and improving e-mentoring in similar contexts.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationService Research and Innovation - 7th Australian Symposium, ASSRI 2018, Revised Selected Papers
EditorsHo-Pun Lam, Sajib Mistry
PublisherSpringer
Pages123-138
Number of pages16
ISBN (Print)9783030322410
DOIs
StatePublished - 2019
Externally publishedYes
Event7th Australasian Symposium on Service Research and Innovation, ASSRI 2018 - Wollongong, Australia
Duration: 14 Dec 201814 Dec 2018

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Business Information Processing
Volume367
ISSN (Print)1865-1348
ISSN (Electronic)1865-1356

Conference

Conference7th Australasian Symposium on Service Research and Innovation, ASSRI 2018
Country/TerritoryAustralia
CityWollongong
Period14/12/1814/12/18

Keywords

  • e-mentoring activities
  • Qualitative data analysis
  • Stack overflow

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