1. PA eMentoring
Evaluation Report
2011-2012

2. 1.
Becoming
a PA eMentor

3. The registration process to become a PA eMentorwas…

4. Suggestions you may have to make the registration
process more effective?
I would have like something that I could print out that indicated the type of
clearances I had received. I never really knew if it was just a police clearance
or also the State child protection from abuse clearance. I would have liked to
have received a printed memo with a date on it, indicating that I had been
properly cleared to served as a mentor and the nature of the clearances that
were done.
somehow, the matches between my background and
prospective students/mentee has not been very close
Increased transparency would be helpful. You should make it
known to individuals before hand that the process costs $10 or
should make this payment yourself as volunteers should not
be duped into paying for something.
Recommendation would be to scale down as
much as possible to ensure individuals do not
leave registration due to length.

5. Looking back, how useful was the training you received
(how well did it prepare you to become a PA eMentor)?

6. Rate the quality of information in the PA eMentoring training

7. Suggestions to make the PA eMentoring training more
valuable?
“Providing ongoing email training tips or lessons
learned from other mentors would be good. A weekly
newsletter format perhaps.”
“Offer training on ways to help promote better
communication and writing skills. It seems as though the
students participating in the program lack adequate grammar
skills, it would be nice to be able to know ways to address
this subject with the mentees and have an arsenal of tools to
suggest to them to improve their writing skills.”
“maybe some suggestions about how to interact with
the students. I some times wondered if the email
exchanges were meaningful or if I needed to engage
the student more in the process.”
“there was too much description and it
would have been easier having "bullet"
directions”

8. 2.
PAeMentoring
Website and
Curriculum

9. Overall, the PA eMentoring website is user-friendly

10. How can we improve the PA eMentor website?
“it still seems a little confusing to me. I'm not always sure
what in particular a mentee is responding to. I get a
message and can't figure out what exercise it is linked to.”
“just using regular email would be a vast improvement.
Too difficult to identify which items from the student
require responses.”
“Better navigation Show less on screen - user friendly Put
reminders with each step from the training so one can
remember what's expected w/o referring to training over
&over”
“By making it clear where to find activity results and where to find
correspondences. Sometimes I have a hard time finding exactly what
I'm looking for, because I don't see any option for activity results or for
correspondence from mentee. Also I received many messages from
my mentee, but when I opened them, they were blank. I don't know if
this was my mentee's fault or a flaw in the website, but it happened
about ten times.”

11. How useful the online curriculum/activities were in guiding
conversation with your mentee(s)?

12. The Smart Futures staff promptly and completely
addressed any technical or program concerns that I had…

13. 3.
PAeMentoring
Experience

14. How long have you been participating as a PA eMentor?

15. My overall experience as a PA eMentor has been….

16. Would you consider increasing your number of mentees
that you serve?

17. Do you plan on continuing your participation in the PA
eMentoring program?

18. Would you recommend becoming a PA eMentor to others?

19. Since participating as a PA eMentor, I:

20. Please rate the following. The PA eMentoring program
helps students to:

21. What has been the most rewarding aspect of being a PA
eMentor?
“providing practical info to students
about their chosen area of interest and
having them respond that it has been
extremely helpful”
“Knowing that I have helped boost
the confidence of a young person “Being able to answer a
in her decision-making process student's questions or give
has been the most rewarding.” advice on things they may be
concerned about.”
“When one of the mentees, at the end of our term, had
discovered some other avenues that she could focus her
interests in. It was as if a whole different world was visible to
her afterward. I attribute that success to the questions that
the program has mentees think about and guidance from
their mentor.”

22. What has been the most challenging aspect of being a PA
eMentor?
“The most challenging aspect is not being able to talk to
any of his/her teachers. One student that I mentored
was constantly making grammatical and spelling errors.
I wanted to really work on that with her before anything
else, but had no one to tell that she needed help.”
“Mentees who don't put any effort into “The terse, often non-
this. Its nearly impossible to have a virtual responsive replies from
conversation with someone who offers up mentees who do not seem to
nothing to discuss/contribute.” take this whole thing seriously.
The texting-style of writing can
also be annoying, but with the
“Getting the mentees to look at the information very short messages, making
that is being provided to them. I usually would comments about it would likely
put up links to relevant topics and they would end their exchanges
answer something entirely different or not altogether.”
respond to them at all.”

23. Additional comments…
“I am looking forward to working with students
who have the chance to further their education
“I think that this is a very
and work toward their future goals in a chosen
valuable program
career to become successful in all they do.”
overall.”
“All in all, I have had a great experience being a mentor. I
love how you provide emails letting us know when a student
has sent a message or completed an assignment. It lets me
know when I need to log on so I do not have to check
everyday.”
“I think PA e-Mentoring is a phenomenal idea and
wish it was available to more schools in
Erie/Northwestern PA region.”
“Overall, I was impressed with the program “I have really enjoyed working as a
and it's easy to read/follow training manual.” mentor and hope to continue to help
future students.”