<p>Mentoring has gained a great deal of popularity across various professional fields and disciplines over the past few years. More recently, planned mentoring has become an important form of intervention with young people (Philip, 2003). Although mentoring can be an effective strategy for dealing with youth, the mentoring is only as good as the relationship that develops out of the process between mentors and mentees and the match that is made between the two parties. The number of mentor programmes that is running continues to grow yet the quality of these programmes remains unknown as this area lacks agreed upon sets of standards and / bench marks that could be used to determine the effectiveness of these programmes (Sipe, 1988 -1995). The primary aim of this study is to evaluate the mentors&rsquo / perceptions of the effectiveness of a mentor training programme run by Big Brother Big Sister South Africa.</p>

<p>Mentoring has gained a great deal of popularity across various professional fields and disciplines over the past few years. More recently, planned mentoring has become an important form of intervention with young people (Philip, 2003). Although mentoring can be an effective strategy for dealing with youth, the mentoring is only as good as the relationship that develops out of the process between mentors and mentees and the match that is made between the two parties. The number of mentor programmes that is running continues to grow yet the quality of these programmes remains unknown as this area lacks agreed upon sets of standards and / bench marks that could be used to determine the effectiveness of these programmes (Sipe, 1988 -1995). The primary aim of this study is to evaluate the mentors&rsquo / perceptions of the effectiveness of a mentor training programme run by Big Brother Big Sister South Africa.</p>

The title of the research is “How mentorship is perceived to contribute to the well-being of an employee in an explosives manufacturing organisation”. This research was conducted within AEL Mining Services, an explosives manufacturing organisation that is part of the AECI group of companies. The object of the research was to gain a better understanding of the association between mentorship and well-being, based on how the experience is perceived by the employee that was either part or not part of such a program, be it formal or informal. During the literature study authors such as Keating (2012:91), Govender and Parumasur (2010:2) and Masango (2011:1) felt very strongly that mentorship begins on the day of birth and continues throughout one‟s entire life where competencies in the mentor role entail understanding self and others, communicating effectively and developing employees and it is clear that great leaders would not have achieved their full potential without effective mentoring. During the literature study it was also found that advantages as well as disadvantage are linked to mentorship, but that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Research identifies the need for sustainable development and although a variety of mentorship models exist that are currently used, it is evident that mentorship does have an impact on whoever is subjected to it. The study adopted a quantitative methodology, in which more than one questionnaire was utilised. Mentorship was identified as the independent variable and well-being as the dependent variable. For this study, the respondents were required to disclose geographical information concerning themselves and in addition to this, the Mental Health Continuum and General Health Questionnaire was utilised in order to determine the level of well-being as perceived by the respondents, based on mentorship or the lack thereof. The Statistical Consultation Services of the North-West University determined the statistical methods and procedures for the analyses of the research. Ellis and Steyn (2003:51-53) make it clear that in many cases it is important to know whether a relationship between two variables is practically significant. The research made use of triangulation where Gratton and Jones (2010:121) propose that triangulation can strengthen the validity of research, and is useful as a means to demonstrate trustworthiness in the analysis. Based on the results generated from the statistical analysis, the mentored group has a better overall state of health and psychological well-being than the non-mentored group. The deduction is thus made that with mentorship there is a significant difference in the overall well-being of an employee that was subjected to such a program. Recommendations were made regarding further research that needs to be conducted, in which a mentorship program is tailored for a specific company/organisation within the explosives manufacturing industry, then implemented and the results of it measured over a period of time. / PhD, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

The title of the research is “How mentorship is perceived to contribute to the well-being of an employee in an explosives manufacturing organisation”. This research was conducted within AEL Mining Services, an explosives manufacturing organisation that is part of the AECI group of companies. The object of the research was to gain a better understanding of the association between mentorship and well-being, based on how the experience is perceived by the employee that was either part or not part of such a program, be it formal or informal. During the literature study authors such as Keating (2012:91), Govender and Parumasur (2010:2) and Masango (2011:1) felt very strongly that mentorship begins on the day of birth and continues throughout one‟s entire life where competencies in the mentor role entail understanding self and others, communicating effectively and developing employees and it is clear that great leaders would not have achieved their full potential without effective mentoring. During the literature study it was also found that advantages as well as disadvantage are linked to mentorship, but that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Research identifies the need for sustainable development and although a variety of mentorship models exist that are currently used, it is evident that mentorship does have an impact on whoever is subjected to it. The study adopted a quantitative methodology, in which more than one questionnaire was utilised. Mentorship was identified as the independent variable and well-being as the dependent variable. For this study, the respondents were required to disclose geographical information concerning themselves and in addition to this, the Mental Health Continuum and General Health Questionnaire was utilised in order to determine the level of well-being as perceived by the respondents, based on mentorship or the lack thereof. The Statistical Consultation Services of the North-West University determined the statistical methods and procedures for the analyses of the research. Ellis and Steyn (2003:51-53) make it clear that in many cases it is important to know whether a relationship between two variables is practically significant. The research made use of triangulation where Gratton and Jones (2010:121) propose that triangulation can strengthen the validity of research, and is useful as a means to demonstrate trustworthiness in the analysis. Based on the results generated from the statistical analysis, the mentored group has a better overall state of health and psychological well-being than the non-mentored group. The deduction is thus made that with mentorship there is a significant difference in the overall well-being of an employee that was subjected to such a program. Recommendations were made regarding further research that needs to be conducted, in which a mentorship program is tailored for a specific company/organisation within the explosives manufacturing industry, then implemented and the results of it measured over a period of time. / PhD, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Professional growth and development in nursing is essential for public welfare and safety. The public expects competent and safe nursing care. Student nurses spend a large number of hours in the clinical practice as part of their professional and clinical development. A clinical environment that is supportive to the improvement of student teaching and learning is imperative to the development of competency of student nurses. One strategy that has been identified to facilitate professional growth and development in student nurses is mentoring in the clinical practice. This is where student nurses are socialized into the nursing profession by experienced professional nurses. Mentoring is regarded as the deliberate pairing of student nurses with an experienced and knowledgeable person. The primary purpose of this research was to explore and describe the experiences of student nurses regarding mentoring in the clinical practice at the Eastern Campus of the Free State School of Nursing (ECFSSON). The secondary purpose was to recommend to the nursing college and clinical service areas to jointly formulate guidelines for mentoring student nurses in the clinical practice. A qualitative, exploratory, descriptive and contextual research design was chosen in order to describe the experiences of mentoring of student nurses in the clinical practice. Purposive sampling was utilized to identify participants who complied with the set selection criteria. The sample comprised student nurses who were in their final year of the four year programme. Data collection took place by means of four focus group interviews with a total of twenty four student nurses (7:6:6:5), which was followed by a confirmatory focus group interview with ten participants. Trustworthiness was ensured in accordance with the principles of credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability. Data was captured on an audiotape and transcribed verbatim. Field notes were taken during each focus group. Content analysis of the data was analyzed by the researcher and an independent co–coder. After consensus and data saturation, four major themes and twenty–one sub–themes were identified. The first theme described the student nurses' experiences of being mentored in the clinical practice and has five sub–themes. The second theme described the student nurses' experiences regarding mentoring by personnel and has eight sub–themes. The third theme described the student nurses' experiences regarding mentoring in different disciplines. The fourth theme described the student nurses' experiences regarding mentoring in different institutions. Each of these themes was discussed together with relevant data obtained from literature and reduced to a conclusive statement which serves as a basis for recommendation to formulate guidelines for mentoring student nurses in the clinical practice. Several conclusions were reached. Student nurses have positive as well as negative experiences about their mentoring in clinical practice. The personnel in clinical practice have different roles in the mentoring of students and the responsibility of mentoring is not clear. The mentoring of lecturers from the educational institution was also experienced as not enough. The research report concluded with the researcher's evaluation of the research and recommendations for nursing service, nursing education and nursing research to improve mentoring of student nurses in clinical practice. / Thesis (M.Cur. (Nursing Education))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

Professional growth and development in nursing is essential for public welfare and safety. The public expects competent and safe nursing care. Student nurses spend a large number of hours in the clinical practice as part of their professional and clinical development. A clinical environment that is supportive to the improvement of student teaching and learning is imperative to the development of competency of student nurses. One strategy that has been identified to facilitate professional growth and development in student nurses is mentoring in the clinical practice. This is where student nurses are socialized into the nursing profession by experienced professional nurses. Mentoring is regarded as the deliberate pairing of student nurses with an experienced and knowledgeable person. The primary purpose of this research was to explore and describe the experiences of student nurses regarding mentoring in the clinical practice at the Eastern Campus of the Free State School of Nursing (ECFSSON). The secondary purpose was to recommend to the nursing college and clinical service areas to jointly formulate guidelines for mentoring student nurses in the clinical practice. A qualitative, exploratory, descriptive and contextual research design was chosen in order to describe the experiences of mentoring of student nurses in the clinical practice. Purposive sampling was utilized to identify participants who complied with the set selection criteria. The sample comprised student nurses who were in their final year of the four year programme. Data collection took place by means of four focus group interviews with a total of twenty four student nurses (7:6:6:5), which was followed by a confirmatory focus group interview with ten participants. Trustworthiness was ensured in accordance with the principles of credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability. Data was captured on an audiotape and transcribed verbatim. Field notes were taken during each focus group. Content analysis of the data was analyzed by the researcher and an independent co–coder. After consensus and data saturation, four major themes and twenty–one sub–themes were identified. The first theme described the student nurses' experiences of being mentored in the clinical practice and has five sub–themes. The second theme described the student nurses' experiences regarding mentoring by personnel and has eight sub–themes. The third theme described the student nurses' experiences regarding mentoring in different disciplines. The fourth theme described the student nurses' experiences regarding mentoring in different institutions. Each of these themes was discussed together with relevant data obtained from literature and reduced to a conclusive statement which serves as a basis for recommendation to formulate guidelines for mentoring student nurses in the clinical practice. Several conclusions were reached. Student nurses have positive as well as negative experiences about their mentoring in clinical practice. The personnel in clinical practice have different roles in the mentoring of students and the responsibility of mentoring is not clear. The mentoring of lecturers from the educational institution was also experienced as not enough. The research report concluded with the researcher's evaluation of the research and recommendations for nursing service, nursing education and nursing research to improve mentoring of student nurses in clinical practice. / Thesis (M.Cur. (Nursing Education))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

Clinical facilitators facilitate the clinical training of students in the hospitals at which students are placed for the practical component of their studies. Clinical facilitators’ success depends on their ability to facilitate students effectively. Students who have been effectively facilitated have the potential to become competent bedside nurses to their patients. This is sure to lead to better patient outcomes and will therefore have a direct impact on the quality of nursing care. The clinical facilitators who are appointed to facilitate students in the clinical learning environment are, however, not necessarily empowered and skilled to teach their students effectively. If their own mentoring needs are addressed, clinical facilitators may be assisted to become more effective in their transition from clinician to clinical facilitator. A qualitative study was conducted with the purpose to explore and describe the mentoring needs of clinical facilitators with a view to proposing a mentoring programme for effective clinical facilitation. Data were collected by means of focus groups with clinical facilitators working in a private hospital group. The findings of this study confirmed the need for mentoring. Mentoring of clinical facilitators contributes to their skills and understanding of clinical facilitation. As an outcome of the study, an outline of a mentoring programme was drawn up which could be used in the orientation and mentoring of novice clinical facilitators. / Health Studies / M.A. (Health Studies)

abstract: Computer Vision as a eld has gone through signicant changes in the last decade. The eld has seen tremendous success in designing learning systems with hand-crafted features and in using representation learning to extract better features. In this dissertation some novel approaches to representation learning and task learning are studied. Multiple-instance learning which is generalization of supervised learning, is one example of task learning that is discussed. In particular, a novel non-parametric k- NN-based multiple-instance learning is proposed, which is shown to outperform other existing approaches. This solution is applied to a diabetic retinopathy pathology detection problem eectively. In cases of representation learning, generality of neural features are investigated rst. This investigation leads to some critical understanding and results in feature generality among datasets. The possibility of learning from a mentor network instead of from labels is then investigated. Distillation of dark knowledge is used to eciently mentor a small network from a pre-trained large mentor network. These studies help in understanding representation learning with smaller and compressed networks. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Computer Science 2017

Magister Psychologiae - MPsych / Mentoring has gained a great deal of popularity across various professional fields and disciplines over the past few years. More recently, planned mentoring has become an important form of intervention with young people (Philip, 2003). Although mentoring can be an effective strategy for dealing with youth, the mentoring is only as good as the relationship that develops out of the process between mentors and mentees and the match that is made between the two parties. The number of mentor programmes that is running continues to grow yet the quality of these programmes remains unknown as this area lacks agreed upon sets of standards and / bench marks that could be used to determine the effectiveness of these programmes (Sipe, 1988 -1995). The primary aim of this study is to evaluate the mentors' perceptions of the effectiveness of a mentor training programme run by Big Brother Big Sister South Africa. / South Africa

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