Posted by Vice Admiral Sarah Hemenway (President) in Proposal - Shifting focus of mentors program from ship-based to subject-based

Posted by Rear Admiral Calé Reilly (STF Surgeon General / Academy Commandant / AFComm, Pioneer Fleet / EGO) in Proposal - Shifting focus of mentors program from ship-based to subject-based

Posted by Nathan Miller in Proposal - Shifting focus of mentors program from ship-based to subject-based
Posted by… suppressed (1) by the Post Ghost! 👻
Hi,

In my second month as mentor’s co-ordinator, I’ve been tracking active mentorships and, currently, we have no command mentorships that I am aware of, and only two main fleet new player mentorships (that may or may not still be ongoing - am waiting for feedback from the persons involved).

So I’ve been thinking of how we could possibly make the mentors program more appealing and/or useful and, one suggestion raised by my predecessor, Thomas Bates, was to consider shifting the focus from assigning mentors by ship, to assigning mentors by subject area. And after discussing this idea at length with the current Academy Commandant, Calé, I think the idea has a lot of merit.

So I figured I’d open it for discussion to see what everyone else thinks. Some potential points to discuss:

1. Subject Areas

What might relevant subject areas be? A few suggestions off the top of my head are:

• How to roleplay a specific department (with a separate mentor or mentors for each)


• Writing believable treknobabble


• Designing a new ship/technology spec


• Creating and updating MOTD’s


• Writing romantic relationships


• Creating interesting swings


• Writing cabinet applications

Obviously some of these would require more longer-term mentoring than others (so something like ‘writing romantic relationships’ or ‘creating interesting swings’ might only take a handful of interactions, whereas ‘designing a new ship spec’ would be more intensive). But I’d love to hear your feedback on these ideas or any other ideas you might have instead.

2. Assigning Mentors

If we do decide to implement some subject-specific mentors then what approach would be the best one to take?
a. Formalise, in advance, a list of agreed subjects and then allow people to volunteer for those specific subjects only?
b. Allow volunteers to specify their own subject matter in alignment with whatever skills they feel they can offer that someone else might wish to learn?
c. Some combination of the two?

3. Ship-specific mentors

If we did go down this route then would we keep the ship-specific mentors also? Even just as a ‘friendly face’ when a new player is landing on their first ever ship? Calé made a good suggestion that we might take the approach of having primary/secondary/tertiary mentors (although we don’t need to label them as such). Roughly broken down as:

• Primary mentors - your ‘ship buddy’ who looks out for you when you’re new and helps you to settle in and find places to post


• Secondary mentors - skills-based mentors as described above


• Tertiary mentors - specialist mentors like CO/XO/DH/GM specific

Is having this many mentors overkill or too much of a potential administrative burden? Or is it a nice way to allow more people to get involved with sharing their knowledge to other players? Again, interested to hear opinions.

4. Other Suggestions

If you don’t like this idea at all, then what other approaches might make mentorship more appealing to the club at large? Or alternatively, do you feel like the program works just fine as is and should be left alone?

Thanks in advance for your time,

• Sharon (Mentor’s Co-Ordinator)

What need would this change be fulfilling? The current program fills a very specific need: providing support to new members, helping familiarize them with our method of roleplaying, our site, or idiosyncrasies, etc. This support is usually best provided by someone on the same ship, as they can easily keep tabs on the mentee, see their issues and circumstances, how they’re improving, and easily make suggestions.

The subject matters are already covered by the Academy courses, or would be good suggestions on Calé’s recent post on the Campus Boards.

The chain of command should, ideally, act as a chain of mentorship already, especially for CO/XO. Having someone else mentoring your XO feels like an intrusion on the CO/XO relationship.

So, what need do you see this fulfilling?

Nathan

This would be taking the various types of mentor ship going on and tying them together. It wouldn’t require any changes to any documentation as far as we can determine but I am happy to be corrected in this.

At the moment We have the ships mentors who would continue in the primary role, we have the command mentor ship programme which started well but seems to have been a bit abandoned. This is a shame and something I think we could revive a little bit. These would be the tertiary mentors.

Really the only difference is that we are suggesting creating a secondary mentors group who may or may not be the same people but could be guides to things as Sharon suggested. This is happening across the club already anyway. When Linds and I were looking to create a new ship spec we sought out people who were experts and were very lucky to have Nick join us. I know if I were considering becoming a GM who to go speak to, if I wanted to make a custom species who I could ask for advice. If I wanted to suggest something in command the best way to go about it.

I say I know each time there and I’m sure many others do as well but there are some who don’t and that’s where having a list where you could go look and find someone yourself would be good.

Basically, what we are suggesting isn’t new, it’s not even different than we currently have it’s just expanding an reorganising a little. The need is the need to streamline and organise the processes we have to support members old and new in trying out new things or just finding someone new to reach out to and make a new connection.

Calé

I think that establishing some kind of fleshed out mentor program for the OOC aspect of things like being a CO, being a FComm, writing a ship spec, creating a new race, etc. is definitely needed. Heck, I’ve been contemplating that we even need one for being Prez because there is a lot of institutional knowledge that may or may not be getting handed down since there isn’t really a transition period between Prez terms.

When it comes to IC aspects, like being a swing position or writing a romantic relationship, I’m not sure that it would be as well-utilized because, by the time those are concerns for new members, they are already on a ship or two and have seen who is good at it and followed along. I’m wondering if, in those cases, a list of people who are interested in side-simming might be more useful? I know it can be a little overwhelming as a new member on a ship to figure out who might want to do some character development and a new member might not always feel comfortable posting an open side sim and hoping people participate.

Sarah
President

Hi Sarah,

thanks for your feedback. I agree that there is probably more need for OOC subject mentors than there is for IC subject ones. As I responded to Katy below, the list of possible subjects was completely off the top of my head and mentioned only as an illustration as to the kind of things I might be talking about. I added suggestions like ‘writing romantic relationships’ in an attempt to include the widest possible range of skills from all corners of the club. But what I am suggesting here is merely the concept of subject-based mentoring, with the nitty-gritty of actual subjects to be something we could flesh out as a club if the idea ever went ahead.

I really like the idea of a list of people open to side-simming though! And again, as I mentioned to Katy, this kind of thing would probably be hugely beneficial for players who DON’T use discord and so don’t really have any other way to plan out side sims in advance. Knowing that there is someone else on your ship immediately open to any kind of shenanigans you might feel like writing about would be a huge plus.
There is an argument to be made that this is exactly what your ship mentor is for, to get you into side sims? But taking the name of an ‘equal’ from a list might feel slightly less intimidating than improvising with your ‘mentor’? I dunno, just thinking aloud.

Anyway, thank you again for the feedback.

• Sharon