Small Mentoring Organization

[Joerg Henrichs]

Hi,

while our project (http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net) is rather well
known and successful, we are de facto only two people doing the actual
coding. There are more people involved, but they are mostly artists
and testers, who will not likely be able to help with any coding
questions (though can provide feedback and test).

Would that be big enough to apply as a mentoring organisation
(especially since I already know that I will be on leave for about one
month during that time, with only limited time for tutoring during
that time)? Or do you recommend to have more people in order to
guarantee proper support for students?

Thanks!
Joerg

[Michael Downey]

Hi Joerg,

On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 5:37 PM, Joerg Henrichs <henric...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Would that be big enough to apply as a mentoring organisation
> (especially since I already know that I will be on leave for about one
> month during that time, with only limited time for tutoring during
> that time)? Or do you recommend to have more people in order to
> guarantee proper support for students?

At OpenMRS, we ask our mentors to be available an average of 4 hours
per week for their student. Each student also has a backup mentor who
(in theory) can assist if the mentor is not available. We also only
assign one student per mentor, but I think other organizations
sometimes have mentors with multiple students.

Personally, a month seems like a long time to be separated from
"virtual" contact with the student (nearly one-third of the program).
If you were a mentor in my project, I'd probably ask you to find at
least a strong co-mentor or to be a backup mentor this year.

AFAIK, organizations can participate even with one mentor/student.

Hope my thoughts are helpful!

Best regards,
Michael Downey
OpenMRS Summer of Code Organization Administrator
mic...@openmrs.org - http://openmrs.org/