Mentoring Programme Pairing: Questions to Consider Prior to May 11 Check-in Meeting

Looking ahead to our check-in meeting this Thursday, during which I will be discussing with your the mentoring program plan timeline and activities, we willing additionally be setting aside a few minutes for you all to complete an online form, which poses questions about mentoring program needs.

Prior to Thursday, I’d like for everyone to consider the following broad topics, which build on questions posed during the ongoing Makerspace Impact Indicators Development interviews:

About Impact:

  • How/by what means do you/does your makerspace create positive impact (specific activities, programs, resources, etc.)?

  • What information do you currently use or collect for the purpose of communicating that positive impact?

  • When communicating that positive impact, who are your audiences (example: government officials, funding agencies, executive university administrators/accreditation bodies, etc.)?

Understanding that there are varying levels of research engagement and capacity across the cohort, I want to reassure everyone that the data you collect to measure and report positive impact can be anything from community dialogs and surveys, to personal interviews, to writing down the number of people who show up for a workshop you’re offering.

The mentors I am working with to build a program to meet your needs includes individuals with a broad range of expertise in scholarly and practical/applied community research; the more detailed you can be in your responses to the form we’ll be completing on Thursday, the better matches we can make for support you may need.

I look forward to seeing you all soon! Feel free to ask any questions in this thread (instead of an email directly to me) - you are likely not the only one thinking about it, so having the conversation threaded here will be of a benefit to the entire IMA cohort.

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Here is the link to the Mentee Enrollment Form we discussed during our check-in meeting this morning:

Please complete this form by EOD (end-of-day) Saturday, May 13. :pray:t6:

Your responses to these questions will help frame how we structure the mentoring program, as well as set the agenda for the research methods workshop I will be offering alongside Thomas Hervé Mboa Nkoudou during our check-in meeting on June 08.

And as @AndrewLamb mentioned during our call earlier today, please do feel free to reach out to me directly at anywith any questions you have, or to have a more general conversation about your research and/or mentoring needs. You can DM me here on the forum, or email me sarah.hutton@internetofproduction.org, or send a message on WhatsApp. :slight_smile:

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So Sarah, here is a general video of DTI from about 2 years ago😅. There’s been much development since then so consider this as old. Ideally you’ll get a gist of how much of a fabrication oriented institute we are.

When i go back to work next week i’ll do well to get you more pitures or media content about the makerspace specifically and some projects some students have worked on in the amker space over the years.

Ideally this impact tracking agenda is drawing my mind to the fact that though DTI as a whole has contents and metrics for tracking the impact we are maiking in Ghana, the community and the lives of peopele, it will be far good for we at the makerspace to have our own way of tracking and documenting the particular impact we are making in our space.

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Thank you so much for sharing this @Kwakueffa!

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