Explore the Role of an OpenClassrooms Mentor

Embody the OpenClassrooms Mission Statement

In 2018, OpenClassrooms amended its corporate statutes to include an official mission statement: to make education accessible.

Make education accessible means helping each individual to continue learning throughout their professional life, regardless of their socioeconomic status, personal situation, or academic background. How is this possible? By making high-quality teaching materials available to as many people as possible!

Everyone should be able to develop new skills: we strive to make knowledge as accessible as possible, to everyone.

Supporting a student on their program means adding the human touch to their learning experience. As a mentor, you’ll help them find:

1. Answers to their questions and doubts.

2. The keys to move forward in their training program.

Since 2016, when we launched mentorship at OpenClassrooms, thousands of professionals like you have mentored students.

Identify the Components of a Training Program

An OpenClassrooms training program is:

• 100% online.

• Created with industry experts and our Learning team.

• Focused on the acquisition of professional skills. 

• Flexible: The student can work autonomously between sessions, which are 100% online.

Our programs are professional courses that allow people to learn by doing. They focus exclusively on essential skills for the world of work.

There are two types of programs at OpenClassrooms:

1. Short programs (of a few weeks) that enable you to develop a targeted skill.

2. Long programs (from 6 to 18 months), called paths, which allow you to retrain completely.

This is what an OpenClassrooms path looks like:

Our Learning team analyzes each skill with the help of industry experts and designs practical, real-world tasks, so that students can gradually develop their skills: we refer to these as projects.

To help the student complete all of the projects in the program, they have access to highly recommended courses and educational resources, but that’s not all. The student also has personal support from their mentor each week. They will also present their project to an assessor at the end of each project, to verify that the skill blocks have been acquired.

Let’s look at the different components in detail:

1. Projects

2. Courses and educational resources

3. Personalized support

4. Assessment

Projects

Projects put the student into real-life professional scenarios: they are given a practical real-world challenge that allows them to gain experience and build their portfolio.

Each project contains:

• The description of a professional context: a company, colleagues, potential client, etc.

• Professional support materials related to the context and to help the student to get started.

• A list of deliverables, which are expected to meet professional standards, e.g. submit the code for a site to GitHub.

Project-based learning has several advantages. It encourages the student to:

• ask questions.

• try, fail, start again.

• use their time management skills.

• create high-quality deliverables that meet real-world professional standards.

• learn to ask for feedback and take it on board.

• present their work.

Courses and Resources

The student is not completely on their own during the project. They can use:

1. OpenClassrooms courses.

2. External learning resources.

Courses are developed with industry experts who specify the concepts and methods to be mastered. They come accompanied with accessible, high-quality educational resources.

But just doing the courses is not enough. The student has to do their own additional research too, on their own. Just like they would if they were working on a real job!

Personalized Support

Learning online is hard on your own and it can be demotivating. Especially when you’re learning new skills. A student needs a guide to point them in the right direction: this is where a mentor comes in!

Each student has one video conference session per week with their mentor. This discussion time is essential. It’s an opportunity for the student to get feedback about their work and ask questions in order to better understand the professional constraints.

To talk about this, we’d like to introduce you to:

• Virginia, a former student on the Web Developer path.

• Alexandra, a former student on the Digital Marketer path. She also currently studies on the Web Developer path.

Listen to their testimonials and find out what they have to say about OpenClassrooms pedagogy:

In this course, you will find several interviews with mentors and students. Their different points of view will show you the impact that you can have as a mentor.

Assessment

During a training program, students are assessed in two ways:

1. At the end of each project, the student presents their work in an assessment. Their deliverables are assessed by an assessor, who cannot be their usual mentor.

2. At the very end of the training program, a panel of professionals meets to evaluate all of the assessments. This is when the panel can decide to validate the student’s path, which will lead to certification.

Let’s Recap!

• You’re involved in making education accessible, because you add the human touch to your student’s learning experience: you support them each week to help them move through the projects on their program.

•  This form of project-based learning, championed by OpenClassrooms, aims to make the student as operational and employable as possible. 

To understand what it means to be a mentor and learn more about the practical aspects, go on to the next chapter.