Using Video Cases to Scaffold Mentoring Competencies: A Program Design from the Young Women Leaders Program

This capstone project conducted an intervention using video cases to scaffold traditional methods of concept presentation in a youth mentoring program. Video cases delivered online were chosen as a methodology to strengthen the support and practitioner aspects indicative of mentoring program success rates (D. L. DuBois, Holloway, Valentine, & Cooper, 2002). Over the second half of the fall semester of 2012, control and experimental groups in the mentoring curriculum (n=78) were presented with text only materials (n=39) and text materials augmented with short video segments (n=39) highlighting specific mentoring concepts captured from group activities as well as instructor analysis of readings. The two groups were evaluated on understanding of the mentoring concepts in a series of short surveys as part of the existing class curriculum, and the experimental group was asked to complete an exit survey as well as participate in a focus group discussion on the use of video cases in the curriculum. Analysis of the course surveys showed the video case group recorded significantly higher scores in the overall understanding of concepts presented in 3 of the 7 surveys. Exit surveys and focus groups of the experimental group indicated that students using the video materials on the whole felt more comfortable with the mentoring concepts presented, more connected with the professor, and more in control of their learning. This project is part of an effort to create a methodology to produce and evaluate video cases as a means to better support and train mentors of at-risk youth as well as introduce and explain mentoring concepts that are difficult to illustrate in text.