My comments "from the trenches". I think 5 hours a week(-ish) is reasonable but quite a lot if there is no good support and "framework" to cooperate.
I have quite an experience with Outreachy internships (I co-mentrored 5 interns in two rounds) and they have the minimum 5 hours/week involvement from mentors, but they provide a LOT of support during the internship. You have very good and tested instructions for both mentors and mentees to follow (I would say they have an excellent and battle-tested program for that). They basically hand-hold both - mentees and mentors during the whole process - including organising chats for the mentees, encouraging them to do the right things at the right time, also providing really, really good mentors instructions "This week you should do that, remember about that, make sure to talk about this etc. etc.". And they send those in the right time, so you basically (both as mentor and mentee) get the instructions in your inbox precisely when you need them. They are also available to help to solve some issues that might happen during the process. Also what helps enormously is having a co-mentor - for multiple reasons. This "organisational" support removes a lot of effort from the shoulders of the mentor, and gives a lot of "self-guidance" for the mentee to follow. And thanks to that it is doable, But even with that support, the 5 hours a week is a huge mental effort. I just a few months ago finished the second round of the mentorship and I need a year break now (same as last time) even if it was super-rewarding eventually (three of my 5 mentees got a job in related IT area as result of the internship), So my thoughts are - if there is good support from the professor/university, that's doable (but someone has to do that) - Outreachy blueprints might be invaluable to build such "framework". If the university/professor is aware that they will need to do it, that's cool, if not, then this might be quite heavy and difficult for the mentors. Also one other comment - there is a recent discussion going on in Outreachy where they are exploring the possibility of paying the mentors, because they realise that this might be a huge burden. They are running a survey now about it to gather more insight. And it's a bit different story with Outreachy because there mentors can spend their free time on "doing good" - i.e. help underrepresented people in IT. Getting that as part of a (presumably) paid - this way or the other - university class, might raise a question if such time should be paid or not. I am now in the "recovery" period, so I personally would not be willing to take part, but if you think my experience with Outreachy can be helpful I am happy to talk to your friend Stephen and at least explain to him my experiences :) J. On Tue, Sep 20, 2022 at 2:56 PM Rich Bowen <rbo...@rcbowen.com> wrote: > While at Open Source Summit last week in Dublin I talked with someone > who is teaching classes about open source. One of the aspects of these > classes is pairing a student with an open source project, so that they > can learn what's involved in actual hands-on participation in open > source. (This is someone that I have known for years, and hugely > respect, FWIW.) > > He asked if there were Apache projects, and, specifically, mentors, > willing to spend 5 hours a week (ish) to work with a student, directed > by this professor. > > We talked about how important it is that we don't set a student, or a > project, up for failure, by having a student work on the proverbial > "pizzas nobody ordered", so that when they deliver, their > contributions will be rejected or ignored. Thus the need for someone > willing to help them learn how to communicate with a project, and > deliver something that's actually valuable. > > Are any of you aware of projects where there might be these kinds of > individuals, who I can introduce to my friend Stephen. > > (Note: This is all the information that I have, so any deeper > questions about how the project is actually administered, funded, etc, > etc, I will not have answers for.) > > --Rich > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@community.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@community.apache.org > >
