Wikiversity talk:Mentors

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Wikiversity:Mentors page.
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This needs a different name. --McCormack 16:47, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. Wikiversity already have mentors for custodians, and some ways this is inspired by that process. It doesn't make sense to use a different name when Wikiversity already use mentor. --darklama 17:19, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

In what respects - why do you think this article (e.g Wikiversity page) needs a different name, could you explain your reason, at the moment I'm with Dark Lama here. Dark Mage 17:39, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Well other pages using that word:

• Wikiversity:List of custodian mentors
• Category:ATP mentor training
• find more :-) ----Erkan Yilmaz uses the Wikiversity:Chat (try) 18:41, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Ah, that explains why McCormack wants the article being renamed - if that's the case then it should be renamed, but it's down to Darklama's decision he is the one who's created the article (draft). Dark Mage 18:46, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

We are just discussing ideas here (btw: we three were already talking about that by chat :-) and moved the discussion to here).

In my opinion a page does not belong to one person only (there is certainly also Help:Fork possible).

Erkan tags all of you with a sticker where there is written "Mentor" :-) ----Erkan Yilmaz uses the Wikiversity:Chat (try) 18:51, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

The ATP mentor training learning project from a quick look seems like it may be talking about the same kind of mentoring as this page, since it appears to be about mentoring in an educational setting. I'd like to think that custodian mentors are one example of mentors that this page could be talking about. Custodian mentors help advice and answer questions of new custodians, which I think is not that far different from say a mentor that helps advice and answer questions about mathematics, programming, biology, chemistry, etc. Custodians could use something like:

While a mentor of animal biology might use:

--darklama 19:10, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Interesting idea and one that I'm all for, name and all. I'm curious about thoughts for actually putting this program into practice, e.g. matching up mentors and mentees. --AFriedman 02:39, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Well my idea is for this to take on the form of userboxes which categorize people by what they are willing to help with. After that the next step would be to use categorytree or DPL to list these users on related topic or portal pages. The mentors page would serve to list the available userboxes that have been created and possibly along with a top categorytree for all mentors. Right now the only things shown are examples. The main point of this is to make it easier for people to find mentors who might be willing to mentor them. --darklama 10:50, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Many (but not all) course pages already let people sign up as course instructors and many of these people aren't (yet) aware of the mentorship Categories. I like the idea of making Mentorship a Category. --AFriedman 14:53, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I know that. I would like for this to replace that one day, at least for listing "instructors". Instead of having to find and manually add your willingness to mentor on pages, you would just add a userbox to your user page and the rest is done. --darklama 17:11, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

We were just playing around with the idea of having advanced mentorship positions, such as professor and director of research, and one of the problems is how to connect a mentor to a learner so that the mentor can claim higher mentorship positions. One possible way is to have the student adopt a user box registering them for a specific mentor. We could create a template that links the user to a specific mentor as part of their user-box something like " I am studying under Mentors Name " There should probably be a registration process that allows the mentor to limit their students before authorization of the box, but this can all be worked out later.--Graeme E. Smith 21:52, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Working with the idea of Mentorship as a role, AFriedman and I came up with the idea of a Mentorship portal Portal:Mentorship and a Marks: namespace that was not searchable (not listed in the search engine) and which might have its edit tag removed so that it could be read but only updated by a template. Unfortunately WikiLanguage does not seem to deal with anything less than a section, so direct manipulation of the marks database is out of the question. Mentors would be given a toolkit associated to their mentorship level, in much the same way we have custodian tools and sysop tools. Because each mentor would have an "Office" in the mentorship portal mentorship could be coordinated. If we could have access to the variable name of the score variable for the Quiz extension, we could then build a marks database, in the Marks namespace, and allow the faculty members to draw marks from the database according to coursename and session number or something. However this would require an extension to the parser. Some sort of marking algorithm could then be used to deal with multiple records from the same test, say reduce the total value of the test according to the number of times it was taken in some manner. The mentor could then prepare a transcript of marks for the students at the end of a session.--Graeme E. Smith 14:33, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with this idea, and it doesn't work well with what I had in mind at all. There should be no power structure, no specific positions, and no bureaucracy involved. Claims of higher mentorship positions and stuff like that would only make things much more confusing and less helpful for the average person. Not to mention there is no reliable way to prove that someone is more knowledgeable or more experienced, and it would discourage people from wanting to be a mentor. There should be no registration process involved either. The only expectation should be that participants that identify themselves as mentors are willing to help when they can with what they can.

What would be better in my opinion and would work better with my original ideas is if mentors would help new mentors become better mentors by offering new mentors feedback, advice and help in how to mentor and if mentors provided learning resources that can help teach new mentors how to be a good mentor. In other words mentor helping mentors as equals. You could also call it a mentoring program for mentors. -- darklama  14:05, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I understand your disagreement and I am trying to come up with ways that do not disturb the existing community too much. The question we have to ask ourselves as Mentors, is how much impact do we want Wikiversity to have. Do we want Accredited courses, or are we just amateurs playing at educating. Either is valid. What AFriedman and I are exploring, is how to give WikiVersity the option of being more than just amateur hour. To do that, there has to be some flexibility on how courses are presented. This does not mean that all courses have to take on a patina of respectability, just courses that want to achieve accreditation. It does not mean that all students have to register, just students that want accredited documentation of their courses completion. That is why I thought of the Registration boxen, where a student can elect to register themselves for a course (or not) and receive some sort of marks on completion. We can then fight with the Accreditation bodies for recognition or not if we want. Currently we do not have this option unless we use Moodle, in which case registration is enforced by Moodle itself. Currently the student can work his little butt off, and in the end they will have nothing to show for it, because there is no way to mark their progress, and no way to accredit them for their work. The only students that get accredited for their work are the students that contribute as registered members of a course at another institution. As someone who is not registered at another institution, I personally cannot benefit from courseware on this site, except by the increase in personal knowledge while this is important, I am left with undocumented knowledge that nobody else can even admit that I have, if only because there is no record of me attempting to prove that the knowledge exists. Since this is my normal state, I have not gained much from the relationship with the courses. I don't think you understand the frustration of the undocumented student like I do.--Graeme E. Smith 15:49, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I think the answer is Wikiversity does not want or is not ready for accredited courses right now. Respectability and accreditation does not come from having a bureaucracy, but from recognition that the work meets some standard of quality. That recognition is then what brings about respectability and perhaps makes it possible for courses to be accredited. I have plenty of undocumented knowledge and I think I am in a position to understand the frustration involved, but that has nothing to do directly with mentoring. I think the only role that mentoring could play in making it possible for courses to become accredited would be by mentoring people in how to write quality works that meet certain accredited standards. Again though that does not require bureaucracy to achieve. -- darklama  16:43, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I am believe it or not not pushing beaurocracy. Merely pointing out roles/tasks that need to be accomplished in order to achieve some level of QOS as educators. That I use terms that have administrative roles to describe the tasks, is probably a problem for you, but what I am trying to achieve is some grasp on the quality of mentoring. That is why I was beginning to think in terms of "offices" rather than people. For instance the "Chancellors" office would oversee the organization at the school/portal level, not necessarily controlling it, but giving a place to monitor it. So the Chancellors office would contain a page about schools and Portals from a Mentors Perspective. Mentors could check in there to see what the community thinks would be a good idea to start in the way of schools or portals. It would give a place to discuss things out of the general path of students, so we could argue to our hearts content about whether we need a woodshop or a Construction Arts space, or both, to give an example. In the end someone would create the school, but this way they would not be doing it in a vacuum. Once the school was created it could sponsor an office in the Schools and Portals section to argue about what would go into the school Someone like me could flesh out an outline, and someone like you could point out all the problems with it, and perfect it to suit the community. I think that some of us, will be more involved in the project, and some will be less involved but more judging, and that is good since it brings the quality of the system up, while fleshing it out faster. Don't feel I am trying to force anybody into one of the roles, merely trying to express the tasks that need to be done.--Graeme E. Smith 21:16, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps that is the issue. I think the focus should be on people and tasks, rather then on offices and roles. The first has more of a community feel to it where everyone works together and picks the tasks they want to do, while the later has more of a business feel to it with a lot of red tape, complexity and overhead. Portal:Mentorship seems like a business model rather then a community model of doing things. -- darklama  23:19, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Well that is the model that I am most familiar with. I was trying to capture the roles people had to play, call them tasks if you will, and the easiest way was to think of who I had seen doing it, and ask how they would achieve the effect I wanted. By the way I noticed you did away with vandalism monitoring as a task....;)--Graeme E. Smith 01:39, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Don't get me wrong I'm not criticizing you for doing your best or for sticking with what you know best. I understand now that this approach was only used because it was the only way you could wrap your head around it and get it typed up. My issues is with the approach, not with you. Now that I think I understand that the reason for the model is purely based on what you could work with and not because its what you wanted all along, I've put some effort in helping to reshape it. I think we might both be on the same page now, if we're not, don't be afraid to criticize anything you don't like about my approach too. I didn't do away with vandalism, so much as I moved and expanded on what the task consists of. See Watch under Portal:Mentorship#Content Mentors. I guess you could say the changes reflects a somewhat different opinion of vandalism on Wikiversity compared to other projects. There is a movement in Wikiversity that believes vandals aren't the cum of the earth (like say Wikipedia feels about vandals), but rather people who need guidance, so I got rid of the negative aspect of the language used. -- darklama  12:22, 30 May 2009 (UTC)