On 15/03/2018 13:52, Daniel Pocock wrote: > This year in particular, I notice the following languages are mentioned > in multiple projects: > > 12 Python > 6 Ruby > 4 Java > > and this also suggests that some pooling of mentoring effort could be > possible for anybody who wants to formally or informally organize > themselves that way.
I would be happy to help mentoring projects involving technologies I'm familiar with (Python in the example above). > How do other mentors and admins feel about this? What should be the > safe minimum? E.g. is 2:2, 3:4 or 4:4 considered reasonable? I think that each student/project should have at least two mentors: a primary mentor and one or more help/substitute mentors. My main reason for seeking a co-mentor is to avoid being a "single point of failure" for the project and to help the student to have prompt responses through the whole duration of the project. I think the maximum number of students mentored by someone should only be limited by the (honest!) estimate of the time and resources they can invest in the GSoC/Outreach. > When there are team arrangements, does each mentor act as a "lead" > mentor for a different student or is it truly mixed? I think team mentoring is an excellent idea, however I would favor having a lead/primary mentor for each project/student. This would help in the organization and in avoiding that calls gets unanswered because no one feels responsible. I believe there must be a clear reference for each project. That does not mean that all activity must be supervised or managed by a single person, but that there must be someone that keeps track of the situation and ensures the students gets help when she needs it. Cheers, Dan
