As the bedrock of our program, email has served us proudly by helping us to build thousands of mentoring relationships over our 17 years. But as our mission evolved, the tools and resources our pairs utilize to fully realize their ambitions also needed to evolve. So this month, we retired email and launched Conversations, a new tool for pairs to easily send messages.
How Did We Get Here
Over the past couple years, we’ve been considering how we evolve to create better digital learning experiences that keep the mentor/mentee relationship front and center. We realized that email did a great job with building relationships, but wasn’t the best way to deliver curriculum, track progress, and revisit material.
So we dared to create the best tools for everything pairs needed to do. Along with Canvas and Portfolio, both of which launched earlier this year, Conversations completes our three part strategy to replace email with a suite of tools optimized for the job required:
Canvas ensures pairs are considering the right questions and utilizing the right resources at the right time.
Portfolio allows pairs to track their progress and access their past work.
Conversations allows pairs to easily exchange messages.
To see how Canvas, Portfolio, and Conversations work together, click here.
What’s Next
Our work is far from done. As with any new product launch, we will continue to refine these tools as we get feedback from our pairs, staff members, partner organizations, schools, and as we continue to learn from our peers in the ed-tech space. We also will be assessing how these new tools impact pair participation and our outcomes.
We are committed to supporting every student and pair on their pathway to college success. We hope Conversations brings us one step closer to realizing our mission.
