Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
(2)
Mentoring model
. There were two types of mentors for this project (called “Zora
Ambassadors”): Ambassadors who went to the local Clubhouses and met the
youth face-to-face and online Ambassadors who worked with the Clubhouse
members virtually through Zora only. Ambassadors to the local Clubhouses
were undergraduate and graduate students who visited once a week to help
install Zora, teach members how to use the software, and encourage them to
use Zora. At the end of each session, they submitted field notes, based on a
template, to the project coordinator.
The online ambassadors for this project were bilingual (Spanish and English)
and were assigned one afternoon each to be online for approximately 3 h at
a time. They were comprised of undergraduate students, an alumna of the
Devtech research group, and a high school student doing community service
credit in Miami. For the online ambassadors, their primary task was to inter-
act and get to know the youth. They were to facilitate communication amongst
the youth about topics that we as a research team have deemed important—for
this particular project, these topics include culture (getting to know about each
other), values, and identity. They were also to encourage the youth to complete
the activities and feedback surveys.
In addition, online ambassadors were encouraged to work with “their” group
of youth (i.e., those who were on Zora their scheduled day) to plan projects
within Zora or to come up with new ideas harnessing the youth's interests (e.g.,
making a movie of Zora, building a new community structure, coming up with
a survey for everyone to take, or writing a newspaper). While the above tasks
were the focus of their work, part of being an online mentor was monitoring for
the safety of members. This included monitoring for inappropriate language,
bullying, aggressiveness, and violations of the Zora Code of Conduct, which all
members had to agree to before enrolling in the project. At the conclusion of
each session, mentors were required to submit a set of field notes, also based on
a template, to the project coordinator.
(3)
Diversity
. The nature of the organization in which we were working—the Intel
Computer Clubhouse Network, which has over 100 Clubhouses located around
the world—meant that the ClubZora citizens would be diverse. We enrolled
over 570 citizens, including over 430 youth and 130 Clubhouse Coordinators.
The enrolled citizens represented 84 Clubhouses, 19 countries, and all 8 regions
of the world that the Clubhouse Network serves, including the USA, Asia
Pacific, Europe, the Middle East-Africa, and Latin America. Of the youth, 37%
were female and 63% male; 77% selected English as their primary language
and 23% Spanish; and the average age was 14 years (range: 8-19 years). In
addition, it is part of the mission of the Clubhouse to work with youth in under-
served communities, meaning that there was also a range of socioeconomic
backgrounds.
(4)
Project scale
. The ClubZora project was a large-scale intervention that was
run completely virtually. We were not able, per IRB requirements, to link
the “real life” Clubhouse member to their virtual persona. Thus, all contact
with the citizens was done over email or within Zora itself. In addition, there
