Welcome to Mentor

Mentor is a composite building block through which mentees and mentors can engage in online interactions to facilitate professional development through peer learning and community building.

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To experience the Mentor capability, you can explore the reference application in the sandbox environment.

Overview

This microsite contains detailed documentation that helps organizations understand the Mentor building block.

Introduction

With the ubiquity of the Internet, learners have access to online learning and training resources from across the globe. The COVID-19 pandemic gave an impetus, and today, India has over 13.6 million learners online (WEF report 2022) — the second largest in the world. Yet, people need to be more skilled to get employed.

This gap needs to be bridged through a network of mentors and experts available in our ecosystem. Expertise is available in each domain, but we need to build pathways to connect mentees with mentors to seek guidance.

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The government has undertaken many initiatives to drive learners online, like the National Digital Educational Architecture (NDEAR), PM eVIDYA Program, Samagra Shiksha Scheme, ‘ShaGun’, DIKSHA, SWAYAM, Shiksha Van, E-Pathshala, National Repository of Open Educational Resources (NROER), and to upskill them with emerging technologies such as National Digital Literacy Mission (NDLM) and FutureSkills (NASSCOM).

The National Education Policy (2020) has identified the need to create a marketplace where mentors and mentees discover one another and engage for guidance and professional development. The National Mentoring Mission (NMM) envisions a large, decentralized, tech-assisted mentoring structure at different levels of the education and upskilling ecosystem. The NMM encourages the use of digital technologies to make the initiative auto-scalable, diverse, inclusive, and context-aware.

Many upskilling programs have been rolled out to develop digital skills. Digital skills are critical for teachers to leverage learning platforms like DIKSHA and SWAYAM and access OERs. Digital mentoring programs can leverage the expertise available in the community to upskill teachers to acquire digital skills.

Mentor capability’s great strength is the diversity of programs and domains where mentors and mentees work together.

Upskilling ASHA project: ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) workers are the frontline health caretakers in the public healthcare system. Capacity building of ASHA is a continuous process and requires knowledge of handling practical situations. ASHAs are associated with Auxiliary Nurse Midwives (ANMs) who mentor and guide them. Mentor capability ensures that ASHA workers always have access to their mentor (ANM) for continued guidance and support.

Mentoring fosters a sense of belonging, motivation, and confidence among learners, as they receive encouragement, feedback, and recognition from their mentors.

Mentor Building Block

Mentor building block facilitates the development of a mentoring network by enabling online interactions between mentees and mentors in the ecosystem. Using the network, mentees can search for and discover experts and seek guidance for professional development.

The capability endeavours to build a marketplace for mentors and mentees where mentees discover (trusted) mentors, establish a connection, and join mentoring sessions. Thereafter, the mentor and mentee rate the session and share their feedback.

Currently, only mentor-driven interactions (group and one-on-one mentoring) can be carried out using the Mentor building block.

The long-term vision of the Mentor building block is to create a country-wide pool of academic experts in different subjects and areas of knowledge to support the workforce. The Mentor building block has the potential to address the skill gap in all sectors of the economy. It encourages a cross-section of ideas and information sharing and opens avenues for cross-learning and interdisciplinary growth.

It can be leveraged to upskill and build capability in academia, government organizations, and corporations. Over time, such a rich and reliable pool of mentors can become a vital resource for new entrants in the job market and the existing workforce to stay abreast of future skills. Thus, continuously upskilling the society's human capital base and keeping them job-fit.

Mentor includes a microservice, reference portal or web application, and data analytics. The service is developed in compliance with NDEAR principles. The services are generic, configurable, scalable, and interoperable.

If Mentor is being hosted as a standalone capability and not as part of an existing platform, you can leverage the following services:

• User Management
• Scheduler
• Notification