Mentoring: A Leverage Point for Intelligent Systems?

This column aims to motivate research and technology development activities intended to achieve accelerated expertise via mentoring. There is a need for methods for identifying who might become good mentors, and systematic procedures for mentoring in the work setting. The authors propose developing "intelligent mentoring systems." These would require a significant expansion of the horizons for intelligent tutoring systems. The authors describe the characteristics of good mentors, which would specify the required capabilities for intelligent mentoring systems. They also offer some suggestions for the use of intelligent systems technologies in mentoring