Dear all,
after our meeting yesterday Marko brought up a very valid question - how can we offer meaningful mentoring to large groups of participants. To be honest, I hadn't done the math of our program yet in a way, where it makes practical/technical sense. We discussed different options and here are my thoughts:
we have to serve 2500 participants in 2 years, who all have to go through a 6 weeks program. How such a program could be structured is laid out in the framework draft. That means, annually, we have to put 1250 participants through the program. Originally, the proposal mentions two batches per year. That would still be over 600 participants per batch. Even in virtual meetings, that is not possible.
If we say that a batch cannot have more than 120 participants, we would need to run the program 10 times per year, that would be 60 weeks continously. A year only has 52 weeks, so that is also not an option.
The only way to do this, is to break up every batch into several kohorts that run at the same time. Even then we will have to offer 3 batches per year.
What do I mean by several kohorts at the same time? We offer the exact same content on 4 different time slots in a week. We open each slot for 105 participants and they have to choose which one suits them best and join that one. We could also have 2 for students, 1 for youths and 1 with French instructors. The content delivered is the same in each of the 4 sessions. However, to offer meaningful breakout sessions, we will need a good number of co-facilitators who also attend the mentor-lead session for support. I would say at least 4, to offer 5 breakout rooms @ 21 participants each. That is the maximum for meaningful group work.
For the company play that would mean the same. As those are schedules 4 times per week already, but only for 30 min each, I would suggest that the same session is offered consecutively 4 times on each of those 4 days (or even more often if we want smaller groups for the company play). That again means, we need either entrepreneurs who are willing to commit to 2 hours on 4 days per week for 6 weeks (which is unlikely), or we need a number of entrepreneurs.
Here is the calculation again:
2500 participants in 2 years = 1250 participants annually
3 batches per year => 416 participants per batch, 4 kohorts per batch = 104 participants per kohort => 5 breakoutrooms per kohort @ 21 participants
What does that mean for us? Each team needs to identify members who are willing and able to commit to facilitate as mentors and attend as co-facilitators these sessions for 18 weeks over the next 2 years. We also all need to identify suitable entrepreneurs who we can bring on board for this. Some of us also need to attend the facilitator training for the simulation to assist the different teams during the simulation and possibly during their preparation for the competition.
May be we can bring FOPs on board? Or colleagues at our institutions who want to integrate this program into their own courses? Let's talk about this next week!
Greetings,
Anja