Cohort Calls#
This section describes cohort calls, what they are, and how to run them. The Community Coordinator holds responsibility for organising and leading these calls. Therefore, it is at their descretion as to whether they run these sessions or not. Reasons to not run these sessions may include time constraints, or a small cohort.
Motivation#
The purpose of cohort calls is two-fold. Firstly, Outreachy interns have their own projects to focus on, which may not overlap with one another. The cohort call provides a safe space for them to interact, ask each other questions, and help each other out.
Secondly, the cohort call provides a space to teach the interns about more broader open science/open source concepts and the transferable skills that come with them, such as code review.
How to run a cohort call#
Cohort calls happen once a month for the during of the internship (3 calls in total) and should last an hour. They include some tasks, a mix of collaborative and silent writing, for the interns to complete.
Ask the interns to complete some kind of scheduling poll (Doodle, when2meet, etc) to ascertain a time for the call
Prepare a collaborative document (HackMD, Google Doc, etc) before the call with the topic and tasks (see the next section for templates)
Always start the call with a reminder of the Code of Conduct, and who the interns should reach out to in case of a problem
Always end the call with an open Q&A session when possible
Use a timer to manage the time spent on the tasks (e.g. cuckoo.team)
Templates for cohort calls#
Here are some templates for the cohort calls. These templates are available in the GitHub repo, but also synced to HackMD documents.