Fellowship Timeline + Artifacts

As we spoke with fellowship candidates in September, a few people have asked if our OpenMRS Fellowship Program will work like GSoC in terms of mid- and final evaluations, regular blog posts, etc. The Fellowship Program will be nine-months instead of three - and we can probably find a way to adapt GSoC’s timelines and expectations.

What you think about the proposed artifacts below - and the timeline in the Google doc?

  • Two blog posts per month:
    • Squad/Project update on OpenMRS blog?
    • Fellowship update on Talk or on own blog?
  • Monthly Progress Survey completed by Fellow Mentor
  • Face to face check-in every two months
  • Mid-fellowship evaluation
  • Final evaluation

More questions for you…

  • What would you like to see?
  • Should we increase or decrease the frequency of posts, check ins, etc?
  • How can we involve our fellows and fellow mentors in our monthly Squad Showcase?

This is OUR fellowship program, so we can try out anything we want and change it if it doesn’t do what we wanted it to do.

@ibacher @burke @grace @dkayiwa @k.joseph @mozzy @suruchi @ayesh @gcliff @herbert24 @sharif @wanyee

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Great work done @jennifer to bring this up to this stage.

I would propose that , once in a while , the squad could select a fellow ,or a fellow mentor to do the presentation at a given time, or probably prepare the presentation under guidance from the squad technical leads

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As reminded to those who do not know. OpenMRS Fellows and Fellowship Mentors

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Do you think these presentations can be under our pm calls or on separate calls ? cc @mozzy @grace

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great template adopting part of of the GSoC timeline, for showcases i definitely would recommend the fellow leading the mentor backing up since presentation is one area the program desires to improve.

for both fellows and mentors, joining the monthly showcases would help them to learn more about what other teams are up-to in the community as well as to share what their own team’s update it.

@jennifer am thinking of embedding the development cycle into our timeline.

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I like the flow proposed @jennifer :100: Yeah, as @mozzy @k.joseph highlighted a showcase would be great too.

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Thanks @jennifer, everyone for awesome thoughts, I also think the face to face check-in can actually be less than a month, Because since there is interest in participating in openmrs showcases that will definitely come along the fellowship as suggested by @k.joseph ,@mozzy , i would think the check-in become less than a month, this should be between fellow mentors and fellows to track the progress and more updates for the project thanks

i think the monthly presentations in the showcase will work and incase of need for calls then we can organise separate calls for the fellowship program

Thanks @mozzy! That’s a great idea and wonderful way to use the Squad Showcase to show-off the work being done by fellows and fellow-mentors!

We want to make sure to keep this very simple.

I would think that we want to keep the updates on Talk unless there’s a compelling reason to have them on another platform.

Who is involved in this face-to-face check-in? I’m a little unclear on what these aim to accomplish.

Good question! With a mid-evaluation at five months, it seems like that’s a long time to check in on overall progress - especially at the beginning of the fellowship. These face-to-face check ins could focus more on progress towards specific milestones in a fellow’s individual fellowship plan, any successes and blockers/challenges, and what is planned for the next couple of months. Maybe they can be with the fellow mentor and any others who are regularly supporting/advising the fellow? Could they take the place of a single, mid-evaluation?

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Thanks @jennifer. I like the proposed flow. I would prefer the Fellowship update on Talk

I feel it’s quite a long period so we may try in every month face-to-face check-in. As @mozzy mentioned squad showcase with the presentation will be great.

So, presumably, the face-to-face check-in is a somewhat more formal arrangement. I’d expect fellow-mentors to be in contact with their fellows more frequently than that and probably more frequent contact with others supporting or advising the fellow, since otherwise we’ll end up in a state where issues may be blocked.

In the schedule as outlined, we’ve really only got two evaluations. I suppose those could be conducted in a face-to-face manner. Maybe it would make sense to use an occasional face-to-face meeting to ensure that everyone involved in the fellows work was up-to-date on where that work was? I like the idea of face-to-face check-ins, but perhaps we should make this depend on the fellowship-specific milestones?

Agreed! I too expect fellows and mentors to be in contact at least every week.

Good idea! We can look at the individual learning plans (where the milestones would be documented) and schedule the check ins based on that - and plan to have at least one before the 5 month mark.

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