Udacity Mentor Jobs – Everything You Need To Know About The Work 

Are you looking for Udacity mentor jobs? What does an Udacity mentor do? Find out here and learn how you can become an online mentor.

Udacity Mentor Jobs

Udacity is the destination for those who want to power their careers through tech education.

Aside from offering a well-built interface and great tech courses, another advantage that users and reviewers find about Udacity is its strong mentor support. This article will inform you about how to be an Udacity mentor.

The latest news release regarding Udacity is that it partnered with a United States Air Force (USAF) agile development lab, Business and Enterprise Systems Product Innovation (BESPIN), for its upskill of AI, programming, machine learning, data analysis and software improvement. 

Udacity caters not just to individual students, but also to corporate entities and reputable organizations that need to provide its employees with crucially needed skills in business, machine learning, data science, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and cloud computing to compete in today’s digital economy.

At Udacity, there are two significant words you will often encounter: Nanodegree programs and courses. In simple terms, a Nanodegree program consists of 3-4 (a series of) courses.

Each course usually ends with a project that provides an opportunity for the student to show his skills mastery from the course. A student could finish a course in one month if he can put in 5-10 hours a week studying the course.

Udacity Mentorship

This video of an entrepreneur with a start-up in Brazil shares why he thinks mentorship is important.

As the job title suggests, this position is all about mentoring and making a positive impact on the lives of Udacity students. 

A mentor gives you an opportunity to learn more, to hone your skills, to lead people and to create significant relationships with people from across the globe.

“Mentor” is one of the offered careers or job positions at Udacity.

If you visit this link https://www.udacity.com/jobs#mentors?location=all, you will see that there is one open job as a mentor, as of writing this post.

Click on this job position to open a page containing the crucial job details.

Now, you might have a misconception that a mentor is also an instructor or vice versa. This might be true for other instances or platforms, but at Udacity, a mentor differs from an instructor.

An instructor mainly creates the course/s that the student at Udacity would like to take.

The job of a mentor is to guide a student to achieve the goals that Udacity learning hopes to deliver

Apart from assisting students throughout their Nanodegree programs and courses, a mentor also helps in the student’s project reviews.

If Udacity pairs you with a student, it is your job to make him feel that he has someone to assist him throughout his learning experience and his journey to success.

Udacity Mentor Values And Practices

1.  Student First - Have the initiative to understand your student’s background details and goals. Quickly respond to his request. Respect him and encourage him to have confidence in what he does.

2.  Mentor-Student, Mentor-Udacity Staff Relationships - Connect with your student and create a harmonious relationship with him. Congratulate him as he completes the course.

You should also work on having a good relationship with the Udacity staff by reaching out when you have questions and by not doing anything that will harm the company’s image or violate its regulations.

3.  Friendliness and Positivity - Smile and enthusiastically ask the student how he is doing with his learning program. Look for his good points and motivate him by giving positive reinforcements.

4.  Encouragement - Remember that your students are most likely career men and women, so attending to their job and to their courses could mean a lot of hard work for them.

Thus, you must encourage your student that challenges are part of achieving success and that mistakes are inevitable.

Congratulate him for his effort and guide him when you see that he has made no progress.

5.  Genuineness and Professionalism - Acknowledge the student-mentor boundary and respect everyone regardless of age, ethnicity, gender, nationality, sexual orientation, religion or any aspect that could lead to prejudice. 

Share only what you can comfortably share with the student. Mediate any conflict, if possible, instead of taking sides.

Udacity Mentor Responsibilities

1.  Offer timely technical help to students regarding their course and projects via the Student Hub 1:1 chat.

2.  Make 1:1 virtual call one a week with each of the students assigned to you.

3.  Work with the student in creating and following his weekly learning plan.

4.  Provide personalized (suitable to his goals and background) guidance to your student for completing his course.

5.  Keep the student active, engaged and motivated.

6.  Comply with the mentorship regulations and policies.

Udacity Mentorship Policies

Every action you conduct, do it professionally. Plus, always remember to follow the core values of being a mentor.

1.  Never practice plagiarism.

2.  Follow the Terms of Services and respect students, your fellow mentors and Udacity staff.

3.  Interact with a student educationally and with your undivided attention. Help him figure things out instead of spoon-feeding him with answers.

4.  Always check for Student Hub messages and emails so you can respond in a timely manner.

5.  Provide constructive feedback.

6.  When providing a third party resource to a student, inform him that you do this on your own accord and that Udacity has not reviewed, permitted or recommended this third party resource.

7.  Communicate with students only through the approved communication platforms of Udacity.

8.  Do not offer work related or personal content to any student in relation to the Mentorship services.

9.  Keep course materials confidential.

Mentor Performance Management

When you accept the opportunity to be an Udacity mentor, you acknowledge that you are confident to answer student questions about the project material of his course.

Mentors undergo a performance management process that involves students’ feedback, mentor responsiveness/engagement/quality tracking.

Student’s Feedback/Rating

They will remove you if you cannot provide students with adequate support. 

They assess your performance quality based on student complaints, student reviews (mentor quality), periodical student ratings, lower passing rates for project response timeliness and regular/consistent student support/interaction.

This evaluation of a mentor’s performance ensures that each student will receive the support level they need.

Code of Conduct, Student Hub Communication

Students and mentors should find their experience, their use of the Udacity platform as positive, fulfilling and engaging.

There are actions that Udacity prohibits such as harassment, discrimination, inappropriate content, distribution, bullying, sexual harassment, defamation, plagiarism, and suicide or self-injury.

When they assign a student to you, you will receive an email notification and you will communicate with this student one on one via the Student Hub.

When interacting with your student, keep in mind to always be responsive, kind and approachable.

Be professional and use no words of profanity. You should also not share with anyone else the project submission with a student.

Udacity Mentor Jobs Requirements

Udacity wants a mentor who is knowledgeable in machine learning, data strategy, data architecture, human capital management, business strategy and portfolio prioritization.

You must have strong interpersonal skills, a strong student-oriented mindset to understand student’s problems and flexibility.

One important criterion to meet is that you must be a graduate of a particular Nanodegree from Udacity.

Yet, if your profile, subject proficiency and skill levels are excellent, Udacity might on-board you as a mentor even though you are not a graduate of a Nanodegree.

Still, I think being a Nanodegree graduate is a very important qualification to become an Udacity mentor. This is because you will know just what a student needs because you have been in that situation.

Therefore, you can provide exactly the help they need.

Keep in mind, however, that you should not share with any student your projects, materials or contents while you were still a Nanodegree student.

Instead, you may only provide guidance and help to a student in order for him to complete his own projects.

Mentorship opportunities are available throughout the globe, but since Udacity sends payments via Payoneer, you need to be and to live in a country where Payoneer is available.

The required tools include a computer with webcam and a reliable internet connection. You must also have a Zoom account and a Calendly (free online Appointment Scheduling Software).

While you will deal with students one on one such as when you make a virtual call, you will need to manage up to 50 students, possibly in multiple Nanodegree programs.

How To Apply

You need to fill up an application form and then Udacity staff will directly contact you as per your eligibility to further assess your qualifications.

The sign up page that you will see when you click the button to apply as a mentor will ask for your name, email address and password. You may also sign up using your Facebook or Google account.

After you complete the assessment process, go through an interview that will verify your skills for performing the task to support students taking up Nanodegree programs.

Finally, you can on-board the Udacity platform.

Potential Income

With Knowledge Moderation, you would get a fee based on each question you answer. You will know beforehand the specific fee for a question on the dashboard.

All fees for questions you answered, moderated or commented on will accrue monthly.

The fixed monthly bonus payout per active student is $24. The payout for every 1:1 call is $12 per qualifying call. The project completion bonus per active student is $6 per qualifying project. The graduation bonus is $60.

They define an "active student" as someone who has exchanged at least 5 messages with his mentor within a month via the Student Hub.

As for the Mentorship Services, Udacity calculates your payment according to successful student outcomes like passing projects. 

As an active mentor, you will have an equal share from the project grading price if the active student gets a passing grade for his submitted project.

The flat rate for a mentor is $50 and you will still earn this amount even though you earned below $50 in a month as an active mentor.

They will total all the fees you accumulated in a month and will send your money no later than the 20th of the next month through Payoneer.

Work Schedule

Your employment status as a mentor is an independent contractor so can expect that you need not spend at least 8 hours of work.

Yet, one requirement to become a mentor is to have some flexibility from your current job since you must attend to the students’ questions and needs almost immediately (within 12 working hours).

Otherwise, this will affect your rating, which could lead to your termination as an Udacity mentor.

You need not work on a specific schedule so you can choose when you want to work. Still, you need to allot 30 minutes meeting slots for each of your student every week to mentor them one on one.

If there is an emergency, you must inform Udacity right on the day it happens and you may also take a leave of absence as long as you notify the staff 14 days before.

Despite being a contractor, your services are under the Mentor Services agreement and if you ever want to discontinue being a mentor, also notify the team at least two weeks before you plan to stop mentoring students.

Being a mentor really differs from being an instructor, although both positions require knowledge and skills about a subject.

While an instructor creates the learning program and the lesson plan, it is the mentor who ensures that the student is gathering knowledge effectively from the courses that an instructor created.

I think the work schedule of a mentor is not that flexible since he has to make sure he will answer students’ questions within 12 hours.

If you are working on a full-time job, this can be a challenge since you must also set aside 30 minutes a week for each student to gauge how they are doing with their courses.

Conclusion

PROS

CONS

Udacity is a good place to mentor students. However, this opportunity is only for the graduates and to those who are outstanding in the technical fields covered by the Udacity program.