Overview
Background-Check Policy
For the safety of our students, mentors working directly with students must agree to a state and national background check completed at the expense of EDUCATION CONNECTION. Mentor applicants complete a formal application and provide fingerprints, for the purpose of performing a national criminal history records check. (See "Become a Mentor.") This process generally takes 30 days and must be finished before a mentor is formally admitted to the program.
Communication Guidelines for Online Mentors
These guidelines are provided for the benefit of mentors, teachers, and students who will be interacting in the CCC Online Moodle environment. Failure to adhere to these guidelines may result in the offender being removed from the online environment and from the CCC program.
• All communication between mentors and students should take place within the Team Discussion Forum area in Moodle.
• Mentors should not initiate e-mail or phone contact with students.
• In the event that a mentor does receive an e-mail from a student, the mentor should forward the e-mail to the student’s teacher. The teacher should then remind the student that this communication is not allowed under CCC guidelines.
• The mentor should not share any personal contact information, including home address or phone number, with the team. If appropriate, and in the context of a teacher-scheduled visit to the mentor’s workplace, the mentor may provide work-related contact information.
• All communication between mentor and students in the Team Discussion Forum is monitored by the team’s teacher, the assigned program fellow, and, at times, by the course leader.
• The mentor should notify the team’s teacher or course leader if any inappropriate language or communications appear within the Team Discussion Forum space.
• Mentors are encouraged to contact the team’s teacher with any questions about the team’s work. The team’s teacher is best positioned to answer concerns about the course challenge.
Any questions about these guidelines or technical issues regarding access to Moodle should be directed to Dan Cogan-Drew: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Forum-Posting Guidelines
To maintain a high level of engagement in the CCC Moodle discussion forums, we have implemented an authorization scheme that allows discussion of a variety of topics in an environment that all can enjoy. The decision to post to the Moodle forums signifies acceptance of the following guidelines. These guidelines apply to students, teachers, fellows, and mentors.
1. Personal attacks, defamation, libel, or flaming will not be tolerated and will result in removal from the system.
2. Profanity, including the use of special characters in place of letters, is not permitted.
3. Be yourself! Do not post someone else’s words unless you supply the quote and citation. Similarly, do not pretend to be another poster, or change the content of another user when quoting that person. Let others speak for themselves.
5. "Fair use" quotations of copyrighted material may be posted to the forums, as are links or pointers to material that is copyrighted by other sources. All copyrighted materials must be cited.
6. Avoid bandwidth hijacking, for example, posting a picture that is hosted on a server other than the CCC server, and without the permission results in bandwidth used by the owner of the image.
7. The Moodle site is strictly for educational purposes; therefore, no advertisements may be posted to the forums.
8. The use of HTML is acceptable within reason; however, be sure you know what you are doing. Posts with an unreasonable or incorrect usage of HTML will be removed.
9. Avoid private off-topic conversations or rumormongering in the forums. Private conversations between students should be conducted via e-mail or other appropriate forums.
11. Thread-killing, or flooding a thread with inappropriate or unrelated posts, is prohibited. These posts will be removed. If you feel a thread is inappropriate, report it to the teacher, fellow, or course leader.
12. "Troll" posts will be deleted. If a post is intended for honest discussion, it will be allowed, but if the point is merely to generate anger and hostility in other posters, it will be removed. All decisions regarding these posts will be made at the discretion of the course leader.
13. Only one thread regarding a particular topic will be allowed. Duplicate threads discussing the same or very similar topics will be either merged or deleted.
14. Attacking the moderators on the message forums for editing, deleting, closing, or moving your posts will not be tolerated. If you feel you have a legitimate grievance, e-mail the fellow, teacher, or course leader.
15. If a student forum user attempts to circumvent a suspension (for instance, by registering a second account while the first is suspended), the suspension will be lengthened.
16. Problematic posts should be reported to the teacher, fellow, or course leader.
17. The teacher, fellow, and course leader may edit or remove any messages on the basis of content. They also reserve the right to deny any user his or her posting privileges after any violation of these rules or due to problems that arise but are not specifically covered by these rules.
This forum is provided for CCC students, teachers, fellows, and mentors. Any message posted to the forums is the opinion solely of the person posting it and not that of Connecticut Career Choices, The Center for 21st Century Skills @ EDUCATION CONNECTION, or any other source.
For more information about the rights and responsibilities of online posting, please visit the Electronic Freedom Foundation at
http://www.eff.org/bloggers/lg/faq-students.php.
This is something that will actually help you in life. Nobody has had this opportunity, and for us to have it, it’s just something like—it’s like a blessing. 