Graduate Students’ Needs for a Mentoring Program in a Saudi Context

Abstract

Mentoring programmes are very common in many educational environments, especially for MA students. This study focuses on MA students' needs for a mentoring programme in the ELI of king Abdul-Aziz University (KAU), Saudi Arabia. It examines the type of services that graduate students might need in the mentoring programme. The sample of participants were 30 MA students in TESOL at KAU. The data was collected through distributing a questionnaire consisting of 21 questions in which 19 items were open-ended questions and 2 items were closed-ended questions. The study followed a mixed method approach. The closed-ended questions were analysed quantitatively while the open-ended questions were analysed thematically. The findings showed that MA students are in urgent need of a mentoring programme that offers academic support, library services, and other support services like psychological counselling and guidance with MA dissertations. This study is a thorough literary work since it focuses on the needs of MA students in the Saudi context before the actual implementation of the mentoring programme. It also suggests that after a period of initiating the mentoring programme, a survey can be sent to MA students via email to ask about their opinions of it and any further recommendations to enhance it. Finally, it suggests that further research can be tackled from the male perspective through investigating their needs.