Mentoring is at the heart of the Dogwood Project and means faculty and staff working together, sharing knowledge, questions, technological skills and www experiences.  One person may have great technical skills, another may have training in design and another may have years of experience with distance education.  Mentoring is a two-way process in which the mentor and mentee learn from one another.

Mentoring takes place on several levels:

• Dogwood offers a mentoring discussion forum on the web.  This has two major elements:
  • An ongoing discussion forum for questions, answers and curiosities about the web as a teaching/learning environment;
  • A focused web site review series in the spring when each member’s Dogwood project web site is systematically reviewed and commented on.
• The URL for our first mentoring forum is forums.nvcc.edu/index.cfm?CFApp=19&, and the moderator is Diane Thompson.  Please review a summary of general web design principles derived from the web site review forum.  During the spring of 2000, we used an new WebBoard forum at loudoun.nvcc.edu:8080/~dogwood/login. For spring 2001, we are using a new WebBoard forum at loudoun.nvcc.edu:8080/~dogwood2001. 

Currently the WebBoard contains only conferences. A conference is an asynchronous electronic discussion, that is, a discussion in which users post, read, and respond to messages at their convenience rather than at a particular time as they would in a chat

• FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions): a location where you can ask questions related to the Dogwood Project and technical issues. 
• General Comments: a location where you can post your thoughts about the process of revising your web site and some of the ways you are making changes. 
• [Your Name] Site Critiques: here is where each participant will post an initial and follow-up critique of your web site.

• Log on to the Internet. Use your browser to go to the WebBoard at http://loudoun.nvcc.edu:8080/~dogwood2001 
• Click on New User 
• Fill in all the required information. Be sure to use the email address at which you prefer to receive messages. When you have finished, click on the Create button in the lower left corner to save your user profile. The WebBoard Main Page will appear. 
• Click on More on the menu bar at the top of the page. The Options page will appear.
• Click on Mailing Lists. Subscribe to
  • FAQwriteweb
  • [yourlastname]Site Critques
  • any other conference(s) of your choice.
• Click on Save to save your preferences. 
• Click on More Options to bring up the Options page again. 
• Choose Email Notification. Select 
  • FAQwriteweb 
  • [yourlastname]Site Critiques 
  • any other conferences of your choice.
• Choose Save to save your preferences.
• NOTE: You are required to enable email notification for the FAQ Conference and for your own Site Log Critiques Conference. 

• To post a message on the WebBoard: 
• Click on a conference in the left frame of the monitor screen to select it. 
• In the right frame of the screen, enter a topic in the topic line 
• Enter your message in the message area. 
• To add an attachment, click on the attachment option near the top of the screen. 
• Click on Post to send your message.