This year, E-tanoda reached another milestone by officially becoming an internship site for ELTE. This is a great joy for us for several reasons. Firstly, the interns can significantly support the program in many ways. For example, this year, one of our volunteers involved in this partnership checked and often corrected the pre-edited materials on our online platform. Secondly, our daily efforts can reach a wider professional audience.

Another positive example this year was that final-year students of the ELTE PPK Pedagogy BA program completed their two-semester practical work with us, led by Katalin Tókos. The course aims for students to create a project by following the phases of project methodology over a year. At the end of the process, a concrete product is created, and the goal is for team members to develop their competencies. This year, E-tanoda had the opportunity to host a group of four students – Anna Bartha, Dorottya Komeiner, Laura Márta Lőkös, and Szonja Nagy – with whom we began brainstorming and planning how to support the program’s daily operations. Two members of the E-tanoda team actively followed the process. Lilla Lukács, the program coordinator, assisted the students in ensuring the project’s adaptability, and Réka Balog, our volunteer, became the team’s mentor. Having completed the Pedagogy BA program herself and familiar with the structure of the Project 1-2 courses, she tried to assist the girls from multiple perspectives.

As part of this collaboration, an online mentor preparation module was developed, tailored to the organization’s needs. Multiple discussions, a review of the literature, and needs assessment interviews formed the basis, leading to the realization that the mentor handbook needed revising. The resulting mentor preparation program, approximately 20 hours long, covers everything we usually teach mentors. At the beginning of the mentoring process, newly joined mentors can read about the role of a mentor, the importance of goals and competencies, personalized learning support opportunities, knowledge-skill-attitude topics, learning characteristics, motivation, learning support platforms, gamification, and assertive communication. These are all topics we address in the mid-year training sessions for mentors, as we believe they are crucial for a high school student to continue their community service-based volunteer work with us. The platform assembled by the university students will provide an excellent foundation for our future work, enabling mentors to be even better prepared. The material follows the pedagogical values important to E-tanoda, such as a gamified learning environment and a reflection-promoting learning process.

At the end of the one-year project, the created preparation module was reviewed with the help of some high school mentors and university volunteers. Based on their feedback, the final version was polished and will be implemented in the next academic year. The persistent and enthusiastic work of the girls was evident, as their instructors spoke highly of their results during the university presentation, and the E-tanoda team gratefully accepted the fruits of their labor. It is always a great joy when a collaboration is not only favorable for all parties involved but also constructive and growth-promoting. We feel that this was fully realized in this case, closing a very exciting joint learning process whose product will support E-tanoda’s operations in the long term. We thank everyone for their invested energy!

The completed mentor support can be viewed, used, and accessed here.