The bulk of my current works falls under the umbrella of competency management in a knowledge-based profession, and so David’s post this week on Peer Effects is particularly fascinating. Under this ‘competency’ umbrella, one of the project’s I’m working on focuses on competency remediation through mentoring. Part of this program involves the integration of MentorCity, cloud-based Mentoring software that seeks to leverage the ‘power of relationships’ for businesses, non-profits and education. It’s mobile friendly, and its tools facilitate knowledge-sharing, connectivity and individual management (tracking) of goals. What I find interesting is its ability to’match’ mentors and mentees based on a variety of factors, and also to ‘rate’ mentors, which from a project management perspective, allows admin to better facilitate the sustainability and retain of a particular mentor pool – i.e., Person X has the highest ‘stars’ for X mentoring ‘x’ competency.
A current concern (and I’m sure I’ll find out more about this as I become more familiar with MentorCity), is the extent to which we can ‘measure’ the efficacy of its individual goal tracking. For example -and David touched on this a bit in his post – how do we retain the attention/commitment/ interest of persons who do not necessarily ‘want’ to remediate competencies? What sort of trigger is in place for when mentees fall short of a so-called mentoring ‘social contract’ – missed meetings, missed activities, etc – what sort of analytics are in place to flag organizations or regulatory bodies to a mentee falling short of the program (rather than this ownice being on the mentor themselves, which is neither ideal nor expected of them)?
For those interested, there are other mentoring platforms out there. This post is from 2016, but provides a working list, including Envelop, Mogul, iCouldBe and iMentor. For peers in this class, iCouldBe ‘could be’ the most interesting, as it is a student-geared mentorship program allowing students in high school to choose their own mentors. Participant schools allow student to dedicate one class per week toward mentorship activities to facilitate student post-secondary success.
What mentoring platforms are you familiar with, and what are the upsides and downsides of their respective analytics?
Interesting Jessica, I hadn’t heard of MentorCity. We used https://www.tenthousandcoffees.com/ when I was working at a University. As a mentor it was easy to use, but I can’t speak to the anlaytics or the administrative side of things. I’m going to have to go check out the other tools you mentionned!
Additionally, I’m torn as to whether the ‘rating’ system makes it feel less collegial?
Jessica,
This is fascinating. Thank you for sharing these platforms. I am really interested in the idea of using such tools for teachers new to the field of education. Especially the educators that did a practicum during the pandemic and have never experienced a ‘normal’ school year. I see great value in the immediacy of such technology and how that would allow for more organic connections and conversations for mentees and mentors. I also predict that the ease of using mobility to support educators is low stakes for those uncomfortable working with larger groups. I think it would allow for a ‘safe’ place to ask questions and work through problems.