The methodology we used for needfinding are survey and interview. We distributed the survey through emails and social media platforms such as Facebook and Slack. We want to understand how much the students know about the mentor program in U of R, how they usually seek or offer academic support, what their general evaluation of the mentorship is and what type of mentorship they are seeking. To further understand the needs of users, we will conduct one on one interviews with those who have relevant experience of mentoring or who are currently interested in mentoring.
We had three hypotheses before we started needfinding:
Less than 50 percent of the students use the current mentoring services.
The reason for students not using the service is because of lack of information, lack of time and feeling discomfortable for face-to-face talking.
More people will be willing to be mentees but not mentors.
It turns out that more than half of college students use the mentor service. Among the participants who said "No", majority of students don't use mentor service because they don't know how to find it and they might find other ways to solve their academic problems. Some participants don't use mentor service because they don't believe that mentorship is helpful. However, nearly 72.8% of people who joined the mentorship before said this program is beneficial.
Therefore, our mission is to make mentor service more accessible and solve the discomfort of face-to-face talking. We want to improve the mentorship experience so that more people would like to choose mentor service. One interesting input from the participant is "I am afraid to look for help from someone who is not familiar to me". That is our main goal for this application - help people find a better match!
The top needs of the mentee are gaining more networking opportunity, getting motivation and encouragement, and learning more professional skills from their mentorship. Also, the key words from the answers to the open-end question about "What services would you like a mentorship relationship to offer you?" are "career options", "internship/job opportunity" and "academic support".
Therefore, beside one-on-one mentorship, we would consider to allow users build their professional network with who might have similar academic and career experience. It helps us build a better professional community where people can help each other.
The number of potential mentees is slightly more than that of potential mentors by 5.3%. But interestingly, half of the participants are interested in being both mentors and mentees. It inspires us to think about whether the users are able to play multiple roles at the same time.
Survey - Google Form
We conducted several interviews with the peer advisor from some mentorship programs and other volunteers. The interview results are consistent with the survey ones. They prove the our inplications are correct. There are some interesting insights:
Students in different years tend to have different needs and focus. For example, the freshmen worry more about the credit transfer and course selections while the sophomore usually have their plan for the future and are more focused on internship or research opportunity.
Upperclassmen are better advisors than professors and adults, since they are usually more honest about the class is like. Also, peers tend to have similar academic and career experience.
Interview Questions
People who have joined a mentorship program before:
Briefly describe the last experience you find a mentor ( or become a mentor), including the process of your approach, the reason, and your feelings.
People who never join a mentorship program before:
What kinds of difficulties(professional or academic) have you encountered during your college life?
Why did you not join a mentorship program before?
General questions for both:
How do you find mentors/mentees on campus currently?
What makes someone qualified to be a mentor/mentee?
How did/do you learn about campus life currently?
What types of interactions should mentors and mentees have?
How should the mentorship be identified?
Would you consider yourself to be a mentor/mentee again? Why?
What year are you in and what is your field of study?