Mentor training slide for the WitsOn program sponsored by Harvey Mudd and Piazza.

1. WitsOn Mentor Training

2. Agenda
• Welcome
• Overview of Piazza
• Online mentorship 101
• WitsOn mentorship procedures
• Phone Q&A

3. This Webinar != Piazza Account
Very Important Note:
You did not create a Piazza account by signing up
for this webinar. You only create that account by
clicking through on the email you get from
Piazza and making a password there.

4. About Piazza
• Free for academic use
• Used by 5000 classes in hundreds of schools
• Semi-synchronous communication
• “Instructor” and “student” roles*
• Wiki-style editing
*Mentor = “Instructor”

5. Online Mentoring 101

6. Be Encouraging
• You don’t actually know these people
• We want to keep them in science
• Acknowledge that the work is hard for
everyone

7. Reveal Things About Yourself*
• Opening up makes you more credible
• No career is completely linear
• Challenges overcome are more interesting
than easy victories
*Within reason – consider this a public forum

8. Respect Others’ Opinions
• People will ask questions that don’t have
definitive answers
• Students will come from different
cultural, religious, and educational
backgrounds
• You can ask students questions, too. Dialog is
good!

9. Contextualize Your Opinions
• If you’re young, say things like, “I just went
through this recently, and here’s what I
found….”
• If you’re more experienced say things
like, “Your mileage may vary,” or “In my
experience…”

10. Encourage People to Seek Help
• WitsOn is not a substitute for counseling
• We can’t solve specific personal problems
online
• Encourage people to use local resources
– Counseling services
– Local mentors
– Peers

11. WitsOn Procedures

12. Before Your Day
• Make sure your account works
• Write a brief bio sketch offline
– Up to 500 words
– List some personal details
• Try to address a theme
– Themes listed in Mentor Guidelines online
– Feel free to add your own themes
• Log in whenever you want
• Fill out your profile on Piazza

13. On Your Day
• In the morning
– Log in and post your bio-sketch and theme as a
Note
• Later in the day
– See if there are unanswered questions
– See if there are follow-ups to bio-sketches
– See if there are follow-ups to lead mentor posts
– See if there are interesting active discussions

14. If You See Problems
• Email witson@piazza.com - we are standing by:
– Technical support
– Procedural questions
– Trolls/hate speech/inappropriate content
• Use the report spam function
• If you see something truly awful that can’t
wait, make the post private and then tell us
about it

15. Trolls
• We’ve tried to keep them out
– .edu address required
– Named faculty member required
• They’ll come anyway
• They’ll say stupidly provocative things
• Don’t ever engage them directly
• Make posts private or inform us
• You are a mentor, not a moderator

16. After Your Day
• Feel free to keep logging in
• Let us know how it went and how to improve
• Stay tuned if you’re interested in interns