PA eMentoring Evaluation Report

2011-2012

Becoming a PA eMentor

1.

The registration process to become a PA eMentor was…

Suggestions you may have to make the registration process more effective?

I would have like something that I could print out that indicated the type of clearances I had received. I never really knew if it was just a police clearance or also the State child protection from abuse clearance. I would have liked to have received a printed memo with a date on it, indicating that I had been properly cleared to served as a mentor and the nature of the clearances that were done.

somehow, the matches between my background and prospective students/mentee has not been very close

Increased transparency would be helpful. You should make it known to individuals before hand that the process costs $10 or should make this payment yourself as volunteers should not be duped into paying for something.

Recommendation would be to scale down as much as possible to ensure individuals do not leave registration due to length.

Looking back, how useful was the training you received (how well did it prepare you to become a PA

eMentor)?

Rate the quality of information in the PA eMentoring training

Suggestions to make the PA eMentoring training more valuable?

“Providing ongoing email training tips or lessons learned from other mentors would be good. A weekly newsletter format perhaps.”

“Offer training on ways to help promote better communication and writing skills. It seems as though the students participating in the program lack adequate grammar skills, it would be nice to be able to know ways to address this subject with the mentees and have an arsenal of tools to suggest to them to improve their writing skills.”

“maybe some suggestions about how to interact with the students. I some times wondered if the email exchanges were meaningful or if I needed to engage the student more in the process.”

“there was too much description and it would have been easier having "bullet" directions”

PA eMentoring Website and Curriculum

2.

Overall, the PA eMentoring website is user-friendly

How can we improve the PA eMentor website?

“it still seems a little confusing to me. I'm not always sure what in particular a mentee is responding to. I get a message and can't figure out what exercise it is linked to.”

“just using regular email would be a vast improvement. Too difficult to identify which items from the student require responses.”

“Better navigation Show less on screen - user friendly Put reminders with each step from the training so one can remember what's expected w/o referring to training over & over”

“By making it clear where to find activity results and where to find correspondences. Sometimes I have a hard time finding exactly what I'm looking for, because I don't see any option for activity results or for correspondence from mentee. Also I received many messages from my mentee, but when I opened them, they were blank. I don't know if this was my mentee's fault or a flaw in the website, but it happened about ten times.”

How useful the online curriculum/activities were in guiding conversation with your mentee(s)?

The Smart Futures staff promptly and completely addressed any technical or program concerns that I

had…

PA eMentoring Experience

3.

How long have you been participating as a PA eMentor?

My overall experience as a PA eMentor has been….

Would you consider increasing your number of mentees that you serve?

Do you plan on continuing your participation in the PA eMentoring program?

Would you recommend becoming a PA eMentor to others?

Since participating as a PA eMentor, I:

Please rate the following. The PA eMentoring program helps students to:

What has been the most rewarding aspect of being a PA eMentor?

“providing practical info to students about their chosen area of interest and having them respond that it has been extremely helpful”

“Being able to answer a student's questions or give advice on things they may be concerned about.”

“When one of the mentees, at the end of our term, had discovered some other avenues that she could focus her interests in. It was as if a whole different world was visible to her afterward. I attribute that success to the questions that the program has mentees think about and guidance from their mentor.”

“Knowing that I have helped boost the confidence of a young person in her decision-making process has been the most rewarding.”

What has been the most challenging aspect of being a PA eMentor?

“The most challenging aspect is not being able to talk to any of his/her teachers. One student that I mentored was constantly making grammatical and spelling errors. I wanted to really work on that with her before anything else, but had no one to tell that she needed help.”

“The terse, often non-responsive replies from mentees who do not seem to take this whole thing seriously. The texting-style of writing can also be annoying, but with the very short messages, making comments about it would likely end their exchanges altogether.”

“Mentees who don't put any effort into this. Its nearly impossible to have a virtual conversation with someone who offers up nothing to discuss/contribute.”

“Getting the mentees to look at the information that is being provided to them. I usually would put up links to relevant topics and they would answer something entirely different or not respond to them at all.”

Additional comments…

“All in all, I have had a great experience being a mentor. I love how you provide emails letting us know when a student has sent a message or completed an assignment. It lets me know when I need to log on so I do not have to check everyday.”

“I think PA e-Mentoring is a phenomenal idea and wish it was available to more schools in Erie/Northwestern PA region.”

“I am looking forward to working with students who have the chance to further their education and work toward their future goals in a chosen career to become successful in all they do.”

“Overall, I was impressed with the program and it's easy to read/follow training manual.”

“I have really enjoyed working as a mentor and hope to continue to help future students.”

“I think that this is a very valuable program overall.”