That might be really interesting. We have something like that attached to our December ID-blitz. If it goes well, it might be great to have such a link for those who would prefer to mentor “buffet style” without committing to one individual or area.
I’ve also been wondering about timing – how long, how intense, how staggered…? – but I think I want to get better at the basic execution first.
Thank you very much @dianastuder,
You did a good job, your identifications and comments, helped me a lot! <3
I’ve come to give my second feedback!
My pair reviewed all the plant identifications I made, confirming some and advancing others, those I got wrong he also sent some good suggestions not to repeat them. It was an excellent learning process.
Besides that he sent me in private some good tips to improve my plant identification and to improve the use of the tool, which is very good, since there are many details.
Besides it was very good to have direct contact with people! Until now INat was a solitary activity mediated basically by machines and I, as a Brazilian, miss people, besides the plants, animals, insects and fungi, …
Thank you @astra_the_dragon, @kevinfaccenda , @dianastuder and all those involved in this experience of sharing free knowledge.
If someone wants to learn insect groups or maybe European birds, I could help you.
I think next time around, I may want to be a mentor.
Here’s my attempt to summarize feedback I got here. I will also append feedback I got through other channels.
I should make several things about the sign up process clearer. Eg you can sign up for both.
I tried a totally different approach to a mentoring program this time. It has been a learning experience and I thank you all for participating in my weird experiments.
It’s hard to balance specific knowledge vs broad audience but I’ll figure that out eventually.
Even if staff were willing, I am definitely not ready for added attention because I would need more experience, a larger team, etc. In any case one of the goals of this was to try something new but with a much smaller backend support requirement.
I’ll be brainstorming with some of my fellow admins and assistants about the best approach to try for round 3. Recommendations welcome.
Mentors should be given better ability to choose which area they are teaching about.
At least on the mentor end, maybe both, taxon choice should be more granular… without making the work too difficult for admins.
After the December IDathon I would like to recruit some more assistants. Anyone who is willing to help with some of the logistical stuff. Someone who knows some java and/or SQL would be especially appreciated.
While I want to prioritize people who missed previous rounds in future rounds I’m not sure of a pragmatic way to do that which would not be a lot of extra work.
In addition to a more general “sign up!” post I should have a link to a detailed description of how the process is expected to work.
We will see how a combined URL works in the Dec ID-blitz.
Feedback from mentors:
Here is my meagre attempt at a summary. Sorry it took a while, I had three consecutive days of poor health.
Giving coarsely filtered URLs is OK because experienced identifiers can further customize them to their liking?
Some people eg Diana like to have a more general Needs ID pile from those who would like help queued up without a formal mentorship.
I need to be better at making sure mentors are teaching about location and taxa they know well.
On the backend I need to make the sign-up data more human friendly.
Chronic illness sucks hard.
I have to make the process more clear from the start. Maybe a general post with a link to further details?
I forgot a lot of people in the DMs and that’s just me being sloppy
There should be some follow-up to figure out what happened in cases where mentees didn’t communicate much or didn’t make any IDs for the mentor to follow
At least one or two mentorship partnerships will hopefully continue (and that alone makes the effort worthwhile to me personally)
Slow communications or few IDs work for some but definitely not for others
Sometimes identifiers are either overconfident or genuinely already very knowledgeable, which can make finding a good mentor match tricky
Holiday weekends are not ideal. Best solution for that is a steady team with enough manpower and experience that I am redundant because my health does limit a lot of things right now.
There is a mix of mentees who are very new / more familiar with iNat. I wonder what to do about that…
Some people have intuited my secret plan: keep this trial small. Yes, that was entirely deliberate. Actually I ended up with a few more than I was originally planning for, but on the first day so many people signed up to mentor I didn’t have the heart to say “so you signed up two hours after an arbitrary b cause you live in South Africa or California or wherever”.
Might be interesting to invite newbies to watch an expert at work over stream.
Some people felt it didn’t work and others felt it did. I don’t think getting an average helps because that erases the “why”.
albach is helpful.
Feedback from mentees:
suggestions of how to communicate should be provided at the start
Should figure out what to do if the mentee doesn’t make a lot of IDs, for any reason
Some mentees are also getting help with app or site use
Mentees are a bit more shy giving feedback it seems… Don’t worry, I can handle a little criticism.
Thank you to each of you who has been asking after my health.
It’s much more apparent here, because I was running this mostly solo with help from only one other person (thanks @richyfourtytwo !), but my health is ALWAYS like this. Has been since 2018. I have a lot of days I can’t really function, and if there isn’t a backup to pick up where I left off (as there was in other projects) the project stalls.
I am trying my best to learn to live with my chronic illness. It’s not 100% in my control since PTSD can be suddenly worsened by many triggers. I have a whole medical / psych / emotional support team, including doctors, family, friends, and my cat. I’ll be OK.
The whole point of this new approach was to see how much logistical support / tasks we could strip away before it causes problems, and we got a lot of info on that. It lets me know what I don’t have to do at all, what needs to be done by someone (me or a backup), and what is an optional bonus that doesn’t require a backup plan.
From the not mentee side, I would say the biggest and best gain is enabling very new iNatters to hook in to the network. That very first bewildering and daunting stage on a new site - to find / have someone willing to answer questions.
And then they in turn can pay it forward. And the ripples will melt the iceberg of Unknowns.
I looked through my mentees prior IDs (about the last month’s worth) because they don’t make more than a couple IDs per day. Gave feedback where I could.
still higher than average!
but yes, it doesn’t leave a ton of material for discussion.
Right, and a large chunk was plants in a jungle that I know nothing about, so I had to look through more pages to find others I could comment on.
This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.