Last week we had the opportunity to meet with some of our incredible superstar mentors to get a feel for their thoughts on our first year at The B!G Idea and to kick around some ideas for the future. The overall feedback from these wonderful people was very positive. Naturally, they had plenty to say for themselves and lots of B!G ideas to bring to the table!
‘Loved the whole experience’, ‘branding is excellent’, ‘the challenge was brilliant’, ‘the platform was intuitive’ were just some of the buzz phrases being thrown around. The greatest news is that everybody agreed that it was a fun and fulfilling experience which they would be happy to repeat.
Of course it can’t all be rosy and perfect in the first year and there are plenty of things for us to work on. There were some initial issues with emails not being received and more information is needed from the outset as to what is required from the mentor and how much time needs to be allocated to the mentoring process. The mentors would also like a guide for judging the projects. Many of these industry experts work with third level students and so were unsure of standards required for Transition Year students.
These extraordinary mentors are keen to be more involved going forward. They asked to be kept in the loop more regularly with the projects so that they could mentor even more. They requested seeing all the projects but only grading their assigned ones. They asked to be able to revisit the projects after grading them to possibly change the score if necessary and they suggested that they could mentor and judge the same projects so that they follow through with the same team from start to finish.
The mentors are also keen to be more involved with the teachers to enable the teacher to help the students as much as possible. There were suggestions for chat rooms with the teachers and mentors or a mentoring session with the teachers to give them the skills required to pass on to the students.
There was a keen sense among the group that there is a massive gap in education which The B!G Idea can, and is, filling. While there was plenty of constructive criticism, there was not one industry expert who spoke negatively about the programme or their role within it. Every one of them was enthused and eager to be more involved and excited to see things developing in the future for The B!G Idea.
With such incredible talent, generosity and positivity, the future for The B!G Idea is bright!
