Rethinking Educational Excellence with the Digital Transformation: A New Perspective on Developing Tech-driven Virtual Mentoring Platform for Unfinished Learning amid Covid-19

The world has been upended by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic which has posed significant impacts and challenges to the learning communities. Educational excellence for the new normal is calling for guiding students to "learn how to learn"and to develop their own individual talents and abilities along their educational journey. Through the preliminary baseline need assessments conducted in six universities, we observed that students are losing learning opportunities to a complete higher educational experience for their all-round development which they should have received in normal study years. Therefore, with the nature of students' educational experience radically changing-the demand for an improved virtual learning experience to attain educational excellence for this vulnerable population is magnified. The objectives of this case study are to 1) identify the learning obstacles that result in unfinished learning amid Covid-19, 2) explore the underlying learning mechanisms with online learning platforms to characterize students' anticipated level of educational excellence through the virtual learning environment, and 3) gain understanding about students' engagement, expectations, and satisfaction through students' feedbacks on the platform and evaluate potential impacts on educational effectiveness. This paper begins by summarizing and identifying limitations in the current higher education mentorship programs from both the mentors' and the mentees' perspectives. Then it introduces the innovative design and implementation of the Virtual Mentoring Platform built upon grounded theory, innovative technologies, evidence-based observations, and participants' feedbacks. Finally, it presented and discussed the preliminary results of the evaluation and implications of the case study.