This paper focuses on e-mentoring as a possible effective tutoring tool in higher education and the advantages of using this recent development in higher educational settings for the equipping, training and supporting of students per se.

The paper shows how the global important task of educating on a tertiary level may enter a new and exciting era of development in the already known ways of mentoring by using the internet, world wide web and other new electronic ways of communicating.

The paper starts by giving an introduction to the background of the roots and the recent renewed interest regarding mentoring. This is followed by a description of traditional mentoring. In the next part an explanation is given of the development of e-mentoring and the growing importance of e-mentoring as effective tool in higher education. The applications of e-mentoring in different spheres of higher education as well as other areas of the society will then be discussed. The use of e-mentoring will be surveyed from different angles. Guidelines in using e-mentoring within the higher educational setting are also proposed and the need for further research on e-mentoring is argued while some topics for ongoing research in this field are also suggested. The paper ends with a conclusion that e-mentoring may be used as an effective tutoring tool in higher education in South Africa and abroad and that this method should be encouraged and extended while continued research on this topic should be pursued.