Back to 1st pageReprinted from the March 1998 Counseling Today
By Mary Morrissey, Special to Counseling Today
In September 1997, the National Board for Certified Counselors unveiled a set of WebCounseling guidelines for counseling via the Internet. The ICN and CESNET listservs (join a listserv) continue to grow and provide practicing counselors, counselor educators and graduate students from around the world a forum for discussing professional issues.
The latest use of the Internet to hit the professional counseling community comes from Lawrence Tyson, the coordinator of the school counseling program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). At the start of UAB's next semester in April, Tyson plans to launch a new project that will establish a unique mentoring program for graduate students of school counseling. The program will link graduate students from different universities as well as to practicing school counselors and counselor educators specializing in school counseling.
Although he admits that there are a few details that need to be worked out, Tyson said he is excited by the response he has received from counselor educators and graduate students. Tyson sees the mentoring program as a supplemental activity for graduate students and not as a replacement for the supervised experiences of practicums or internships.
"Our school counseling program is very heavy in course work designed to duplicate the 'real world' of school counseling," Tyson said. "Establishing a mentoring program concurrent with these new courses will allow our school counseling students to check out new ideas, confirm existing philosophies and help develop a professional network outside a student's existing environment."
By enabling graduate students to "pick the brains" of practicing counselors in schools of all sizes and demographic compositions, this mentoring program will give the students access to the issues that affect those on the front lines of student services. For example, they can learn about counseling challenges in an inner city school versus those in a rural school, receive advice on handling a 1,000 student caseload or learn how to stay organized when their job requires them to be in three different buildings.
Tyson also hopes the program breaks some of the isolation graduate students encounter as most are working full-time and can only afford to spend a limited amount of time on campus or informally conversing with fellow students.
There are other advantages of a mentoring program via the Internet, including the fact that it would allow students to have more than one mentor and therefore more than one perspective. It also would enable students to establish relationships with people of various ethnic backgrounds that they may not have access to at their university, noted Russell Sabella, an assistant professor of counselor education at the University of Louisville.
Sabella was one of the counselor educators who responded to Tyson's post on CESNET asking for feedback on his idea for this electronic mentoring program. Since then, Sabella has discussed the issue with many students and counselor educators at the university and the interest has been very positive.
In addition to the theoretical benefits of bringing together people with different experiences and knowledge, Tyson has a practical reason for implementing this program. Today's counselors-in-training are entering a rapidly changing society where technology is an important part of professional and private life. Aside from learning about human development, different counseling techniques and all the other standards of earning a counseling degree, Tyson believes students need to be technologically savvy to truly be effective counselors.
In fact, the UAB counselor education department requires that its students exhibit technological competencies in order to graduate and certain classes require participation on the ICN. Students must present evidence of signing on, posting a question related to their area of interest and communicating with several ICN subscribers, Tyson said.
Another practical advantage of a mentoring program boils down to the reason why e-mail is so popular in the first place: convenience. No more playing phone tag or worrying about different time zones. Individuals can check their e-mail and respond whenever it is convenient for them, which for Association for Counselor Education and Super-vision (ACES) President-Elect Michele Thomas, is sometimes two o'clock in the morning.
"I check my messages when I have time ... a call would not work at that time in the morning," said Thomas.
Disadvantages
Although the benefits are clearly numerous, a mentoring program conducted via the Internet is not without its drawbacks. The potential problems that most concern counselor educators have to do with the lack of personal contact inherent to this form of communication. Not being able to hear the tone of someone's voice or see the body language can cause misinterpretation at times.
"I would miss the actual person-to-person contact that is involved in a mentoring relationship," said Margaret Fong, president of ACES. "Many of the best times I've spent with students are around a cup of coffee or at lunch."
"The biggest disadvantage is that it is still unknown how effective such relationships are in such a relatively new medium," said Sabella. "[Although] those who mentor over the [Internet] do report that their personal experiences are positive and useful in their professional development, much of the research about the effects of mentoring needs to be conducted again in this new environment."
Although many people still have concerns about confidentiality and privacy issues with the Internet, Sabella argued that "today's Internet is as safe and secure as conducting mentorship activities over the phone or during lunch at the local cafe."
For Ted Remley, professor and coordinator of the counselor education program at the University of New Orleans, the biggest drawback to a cybermentoring relationship between counselor educator and graduate student is time.
"I don't think it would work," he said. "I think it would be too time consuming and personally I think most counselor educators would feel the same way as I do, which is, we really have a responsibility to our own students and if we are going to be spending time grooming students for the profession we are going to be doing it with them. We are not going to be sitting at our computers [writing] e-mail to somebody in San Francisco or Alabama."
Although not a supporter of counselor educators mentoring students from other universities, Remley does think the student-to-student and the student-to-practicing counselor mentoring relationship would create positive opportunities for all parties involved. Once such a program is organized, he said he will have no problems recruiting students to get involved.
But what can a graduate student get from another graduate student half way across the country that they can't get from the person sitting behind them in class? Remley believes that the students will use the mentoring program to "check out" their own experience to see how it is similar or different from that of a student at another institution. His students already do a lot of this comparing of notes, so to speak, and Remley sees a benefit to expanding it to other universities.
Frequent Internet users
Counselors admit that their area of expertise does not usually include advanced computer skills, but that hasn't stopped them from becoming frequent users of the Internet for both professional and personal pursuits.
E-mail listservs are becoming more popular. Whereas some people, like Remley, believe they "clutter up" their e-mail inbox, others, including Thomas, see them as godsends which save time and money.
"I use the [Internet] on a daily basis for ... conducting research, identifying and compiling counseling related sites, e-mail communication to individuals and groups, and e-mail communication with my students for teaching and advising," said Sabella. "I also have found the [Internet] helpful for augmenting classroom activities. For instance, I have students consult ethical statements, [look up] resources for counseling theory and techniques, and review guidance department web sites for content."
Most graduate students have learned that one of the best ways to reach their counselor educators is with e-mail and they are very comfortable with this mode of communication. It is for this reason that many believe a cybermentoring program could be an innovative alternative for students and professionals.
"It would be a great way for busy professional counselors in schools and other settings and students to interact," said Thomas, who uses a distribution list to link to the students in her Methods of Research class. "The counselors can check their messages when they have time and the students who may feel shy about asking a question in person can ask more easily through e-mail. I am really surprised how some students can really open up over the Internet."
"This idea seems too good for it not to work," said Tyson, "however, I am cautious."
For more information or to participate in this program, please contact Larry Tyson at ltyson@uab.edu.
Mary Morrissey is a former editor of Counseling Today. She lives in Boulder, Colo.
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