Tutor/Mentor Connection

Connect knowledge, volunteers, youth and make a difference.

Since 2000 the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) has been piloting the use of an on-line documentation system to show the impact of its actions on the growth of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in the Chicago region. A this page you can read an overview of what an OHATS is and how we have intended to use it.

From 2000 till 2007 we attempted to use the original OHATS which was created in 1999-2000 using a one year grant provided by a Chicago foundation. While that grant enabled us to build the first version, we were not able to get follow-up funding, thus could not make enhancements based on what we were learning, nor keep our evaluation volunteer attached to the project with as much time as was needed. The primary weakness of the original system was that while recorders could document actions, there was no way to view summaries of the actions, or sort them by category, or by who recorded the action. Thus as the list of actions grew fewer people were using the system because no one wanted to scroll through 500 to 900 actions to try to capture a picture of what the system was telling us.

In late 2006 the system began to attract spammers, and this caused us to shut it down for a while. Then in mid 2007, a new volunteer joined T/MC, and since then has completely rebuilt the T/MC OHATS, solving some of the problems of the first version.

The new OHATS is at http://www.tutormentorprogramlocator.net/OHATS/Home.aspx. This site may not be the final hosting place, but that's where it is now.

On the home page you can see a pie chart, which automatically updates each time a recorder documents a new action. On internal pages you can sort by date, type of action, name of recorder, etc. to get a description of each action documented.

On the Metrics page you can see additional pie charts that summarize the information collected. My goal of using this forum is to create discussion threads focused specifically at each of the categories of information being summaried. I'll link from the OHATS page to these discussions, so that when a viewer visits the OHATS, they can come here and discuss the meaning of the information.

Will this work? We'll see how it works based on the volume of traffic and the quality of interaction.

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Replies to This Discussion

OHATS is intended to show the work of many people who take action daily to help build comprehensive, long-term, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in high poverty neighborhoods. This means that other people can become recorders and document actions of themselves, and their organization (for profit, faith group, university, non profit, school, etc.).

If you would like to become a recorder to document your own actions, introduce yourself and tell of the work you hope to do.

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