ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how mentoring can scaffold both social processes and knowledge-building processes to develop culturally inclusive online learning communities. Facilitator is a formal role filled by the designated teacher, instructor, academic, or trainer whose main responsibility is to offer the course or learning experience. It begins by discussing the necessary paradigm shift required from teaching to facilitating in the online environment and defines the expanded role of teaching to include facilitating, coaching, and mentoring. The chapter also focuses specifically on mentoring, which is a distributed function, as mentoring is a key to building an inclusive online community. It discusses the theoretical base for mentoring, defines co-mentoring within the WisCom framework, and addresses the role of the mentor within the WisCom community. The chapter explores e-mentoring as a vehicle for expanding mentoring across cultures and discusses research on cross-cultural e-mentoring. It concludes by discussing mentoring functions for each stage of WisCom's Collaborative Inquiry Cycle.
