How to keep things organized when you are a 1:1 Udacity Mentor

I have found that having my own records helps me better understand the progress of my mentees and the payments of Udacity.

Sebastián Velásquez
Nov 7 · 4 min read

Being a 1:1 mentor in one or more nano-degree programs is a nice experience. However, some things can get messy quickly. Udacity gives some tools to facilitate the work. It provides a series of guidelines, gives different types of notifications, and receives feedback from the community to improve the system. However, there are some parts that the platform is still missing, and it may take some time until they implement them.

There are several ways to keep things organized. I am sure many fellow mentors use their own methods to do so. In my case, I decided to make things simple by using a Google spreadsheet. That document helps me keep records of my mentees and their progress. Hopefully, others can benefit from my approach or improve their own.

Some missing parts

The motivation to create my own spreadsheet was the lack of information in the Mentor Dashboard. Even though the dashboard is improved frequently, it does not provide enough information about the progress of students. As seen in Figure 1, the panel works as a summary of your mentees’ progress. For instance, it shows the number of projects finished by each student, but it does not inform which projects.

Figure 1. Mentor dashboard

If I want to know which projects a student completed, I need to go to the chatroom of that student, check their profile, and display the status of the projects in the panel, as shown in Figure 2. However, that panel is still incomplete. For instance, I do not see the suggested due dates for the remaining projects. That information is available for every student in their learning plans, but it would be better to have everything in a single place.

Figure 2. Mentee profile.

One spreadsheet to rule them all

As mentioned, it would be better to have everything in a single place. That is what I did in a document, as seen in Figure 3. The content of the spreadsheet is pretty straightforward. There are several sheets that compile different types of information. To start, I have a sheet for every program in which I am a mentor. In those sheets, I list the mentees along with their start dates, the suggested due dates for the projects, and their state.

Figure 3. Spreadsheet with different types of information

Having that information compiled in a single sheet allows me having better control of students’ progress. Moreover, in the sheet, it is easier seeing the number of assigned mentees. Additionally, using colors in the cells facilitates identifying what projects have been completed (green), and which ones have missed the suggested date (yellow). Also, I can easily see who has finished the program (full green row) and who is no longer in it (full red row).

Records to understand payments

In another sheet, I list the projects completed by students, as seen in Figure 4. Unlike the previous one, which helps me track the progress of every student, this sheet lets me know the number of completed projects every month. This is important because that is a factor that affects payments. Thus, I can compare the report presented by Udacity when they release a payment. Until the staff explains how the calculations are done, I think it is good to keep these records.

Figure 4. Sheet listing completed projects

Similarly, I have two sheets to list the 1:1 meetings I’ve had with students, and the graduated students, as seen in Figures 5 and 6. Both of them pursue the same goal as the previous one since those numbers are considered for payments. Finally, I pinned the tab of this document, so it is there every time I open my web browser.

Figure 5. Sheet listing 1:1 meetings
Figure 6. Sheet listing graduated student

Conclusion

Being a 1:1 mentor at Udacity is a nice experience. However, some things can get messy quickly. The platform still does not have all the features we would like. Thus, it is important to find alternatives to facilitate the work. In this post, I shared my strategy to keep things organized. Hopefully, other fellow mentors will find it useful.

Do you have tips or tricks to keep things organized? Please, share them.


Hi, I am Sebastian. I do software development and AI consultancy. I work in projects related to machine learning, computer vision and UX. Connect with me on LinkedIn.

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