From nnorwitz at gmail.com  Wed Oct  4 07:35:09 2006
From: nnorwitz at gmail.com (Neal Norwitz)
Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2006 22:35:09 -0700
Subject: [Soc2006] final evaluations needed; better tracking
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	<451C59B9.20007@mindlace.net>
	<1A9B8AB3-4E1A-4589-8D76-70444A0DF749@cleverdevil.org>
Message-ID: <ee2a432c0610032235l5e8d1913vf3d5eb366550e5fb@mail.gmail.com>

I'm replying to this msg since it was last in queue.  I'll try to
address other things that have been said (from what I remember or just
read).

On 9/29/06, Jonathan LaCour <jonathan-lists at cleverdevil.org> wrote:
> emf wrote:
>
> In my years out in the "real world" I certainly don't find myself
> being pestered by my boss several times a day.  Rather, we talk about
> project status on a fairly routine basis a few times a week, and if
> I need any assistance or am having any issues, I contact him.  I can't
> think of a job that I have had where my boss has had the time, or the
> desire, to hold my hand through an entire project.  In fact, the best
> bosses I have had have left me alone as much as possible!

There was a moderate amount of communication from us (Brett and me) to
the mentors at the beginning to try to set the tone.  My hope was that
the mentors would clearly carry on the burden of communication after
that.  I suppose it doesn't surprise me that there was large
variation.  I tried to stay out of the way as much as possible.  I
agree that it was too much.  The problem is that I still probably
spent a couple hours a week on misc things as it was.  It would be
very hard to get more time to following up with mentors, much less
students.

This worked a bit better at the beginning because I could ask Brett to
follow up and address issues and handle some on my own.  Towards the
middle of the program Brett was on his way out and neither one of us
did much more.  I hoped that no news was good news, knowing that
wouldn't quite be the case.

I believe Jim mentioned that he views this more as education than
getting something done.  I don't know if he got that from me or Google
or wherever, but strongly believe this as well.  I did not expect
every student to complete.  I expected some students would drop out,
some students would not complete because their project was too
ambitious, etc.

I'm not certain how much we could have improved that situation.  I
think from a community building perspective we should have done a
greater job staying involved.  Given there were many communities, it's
not clear how this really could have been accomplished, especially
given time constraints.

The biggest thing I would have liked to see is more interaction with
SoC students on python-dev.  Some did and some didn't.  As Josiah?
said, we all should have done a better job of hooking the students up
with existing resources so they find solutions to their problems.
Ultimately we can't make the students do work, we can only encourage.

I hope this discussion continues and we have resolutions out of this.
Specifically, it would be good to have a wiki that describes what
should be expected.  How much time a mentor should expect to spend,
what should they do, what should the PSF do, etc.

I had expected mentors to communicate with their students at least a
couple times a week.

I personally expected to deal with the problems (which there were a
few and were addressed adequately IMO).  I thought we started decent
by communicating with the mentors and got things rolling.  We did not
do a good job of keeping that momentum up.  Part of that was providing
a different avenue for students to contact us.  (That was done
explicitly, but only for the problem cases.)

n

From karol.langner at kn.pl  Wed Oct  4 08:53:28 2006
From: karol.langner at kn.pl (Karol Langner)
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 08:53:28 +0200
Subject: [Soc2006] final evaluations needed; better tracking
In-Reply-To: <ee2a432c0610032235l5e8d1913vf3d5eb366550e5fb@mail.gmail.com>
References: <fb6fbf560609121335sa5e26b8h52ea13f174ab4fea@mail.gmail.com>
	<1A9B8AB3-4E1A-4589-8D76-70444A0DF749@cleverdevil.org>
	<ee2a432c0610032235l5e8d1913vf3d5eb366550e5fb@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <200610040853.29237.karol.langner@kn.pl>

On Wednesday 04 of October 2006 07:35, Neal Norwitz wrote:
> I'm replying to this msg since it was last in queue.  I'll try to
> address other things that have been said (from what I remember or just
> read).
As a failed SoC student, let me give some input :)
I can say for sure that I didn't finish the project due to my own fault. I 
can't say I was discouraged, but at some point I did find the project goals 
quite overwhelming for the designated deadline and the feeling was not eased 
by anyone or anything. In other words, things turned out harder than I 
imagined.

> On 9/29/06, Jonathan LaCour <jonathan-lists at cleverdevil.org> wrote:
> > emf wrote:
> >
> > In my years out in the "real world" I certainly don't find myself
> > being pestered by my boss several times a day.  Rather, we talk about
> > project status on a fairly routine basis a few times a week, and if
> > I need any assistance or am having any issues, I contact him.  I can't
> > think of a job that I have had where my boss has had the time, or the
> > desire, to hold my hand through an entire project.  In fact, the best
> > bosses I have had have left me alone as much as possible!
I totally agree, you can't expect a boss, more so a mentor, to look over the 
student's every move.

> This worked a bit better at the beginning because I could ask Brett to
> follow up and address issues and handle some on my own.  Towards the
> middle of the program Brett was on his way out and neither one of us
> did much more.  I hoped that no news was good news, knowing that
> wouldn't quite be the case.
>
> I believe Jim mentioned that he views this more as education than
> getting something done.  I don't know if he got that from me or Google
> or wherever, but strongly believe this as well.  I did not expect
> every student to complete.  I expected some students would drop out,
> some students would not complete because their project was too
> ambitious, etc.
That was not really clear from the start, at least for me. It is true though, 
since I learned alot, and did not get much done :) although I do hope to get 
back to the project in the near future and continue to work on it.

Karol

-- 
written by Karol Langner
Wed Oct  4 08:39:44 CEST 2006