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International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

Abstract

In recent years, Australian universities have intensified efforts to respond to the growing demand for remote and online study. This shift has underscored the need for academics who are appropriately prepared to design, develop, deliver, and evaluate high-quality online courses. Mentoring represents a key practice that can support the development of such expertise. However, formalized and well-established mentoring practices are not consistently present across Australian higher education institutions. In contrast, most universities maintain academic development units tasked with enhancing teaching capacity, particularly in relation to online learning. This paper conceptualizes aspects of academic development practice as a form of mentoring. Drawing on the authors’ experiences as academic developers, it critically examines how academic development initiatives can function as mentoring mechanisms. Two illustrative cases from Australian universities engaged in online education are presented to demonstrate this alignment. The paper concludes by proposing strategies for fostering mentoring through the intentional leveraging of academic development practices and discusses the broader implications for institutions seeking to strengthen online teaching capacity.

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