Fedora Student Mentor Program

= The Fedora Student Mentor Programme =

The Fedora Student mentor programme is a programme targeted towards the college students to help them work with fedora on a project for their final/pre-final year assignment/project work.

Objectives
Increase the contributor base of fedora by involving more college students to work on projects of their choice which is useful for fedora as well as the student community.

The Programme
The College students(primarily engineering students) have the task of working on an internal projects during their course of study. The Fedora Mentor programme here plays a vital role in helping the students work on topics of their interest related to fedora as part of their curriculum project.

The Fedora mentors programme for students creates a platform for students to work on projects of their interest which is related to fedora and thereby giving an opportunity to work for an open source project. The Fedora mentors help the students of the college in completing this successfully by guiding and assisting them during their course of project. The college students would interact with the Fedora mentors whenever they need technical guidance. The Fedora mentors would be selected based on the requirements/projects and also on their area of expertise/interest. The students could get in touch with the mentors through email/chat/IRC and the mentors would help the students in completing the projects.

The programme should not be only on coding. All aspects listed on join-fedora page should be covered.

This programme is already there for ambassadors. This is to extend it to student community also.

Advantages

 * 1) Helps Fedora in attracting college students to contribute to Fedora.
 * 2) Helps Fedora in attracting college students to use fedora.
 * 3) Fedora gets more innovative applications/ideas which could be used for the project.
 * 4) Students get an opportunity to work on one of the most successful and respected open source projects.
 * 5) Students get an opportunity to collaborate with best developers in the software industry who act as Fedora mentors.

To be done

 * 1) Listing of the mentors.
 * 2) Assigning the mentors to project(s).
 * 3) Assigning the students to the respective mentors based on the projects.
 * 4) Time line required for the completion of the projects.
 * 5) Periodic evaluation of students on the progress of the projects by the mentors.
 * 6) A Certificate and a small token of appreciation on successful completion of the project.
 * 7) Ambassadors to publicise the mentors programme and help students with a smooth entry in the project.

Conducting Fedora Workshops and conferences in Colleges
As part of the mentor programme, conducting fedora workshops and conferences in college helps fedora in attracting more students and there-by increasing the user base and also creating an awareness of what Fedora is and its benefits.

Advantages

 * Increase in the User Base with the help of free media programme.
 * Increase in developer/contributor base.
 * More point of contacts covering more area.
 * Users turn into potential contributors.

Issues to be resolved
As raised by different contributors.
 * 1) Some students desire that they may be provided with a certificate from a company at the end of the project - how does that requirement fit into this program ?
 * 2) How would the mentors be tracking the projects ?
 * 3) Estimating that the objective of the projects were met at the end of the projected duration.