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Boost is an online mentoring community "starter kit" with everything your organization needs to start an Internet mentoring program or to add an online component to an existing mentoring program. The system is completely modular and customizable to meet community needs. If desired, "group democracy" tools can be provided to allow community members to decide on which feature(s) should be implemented next and/or to decide community policy.

Two boost user types are supported 'out of the box':

• Mentors: user accounts set up as mentors with special tools for working with their protégés
• Protégés: protégé accounts have access to content and communications created by their mentors and, if desired, other protégés as well
• Site Admins: admin accounts can control and administer the site, its users and all of the site's content

Here are some of the features that come with the MentorNet boost:

Groups

Mentor users can create and administer "mentoring groups." These groups can be private or public, open to anyone who wants to 'subscribe' or closed to only those users selected by the Mentor. A mentoring group with only one protégés allows for private mentoring groups, and larger groups can engage in peer-to-peer mentoring if desired. Mentors can also appoint other users to be co-administrators of any group which they 'own'.

Groups provide a way to keep users content where it's supposed to be, and control access to it to only other group members. It also provides a central hub for all group-related content: discussion forums, stories, resources, documents, assignments, etc.

User-powered publishing

Mentors and protégés alike can use boost's user-friendly interface to publish their own content to the site. Whether it's an assignment, an event (automatically added to the calendar), a story, blog posting, assignment or some custom content, users can publish their content to the site using only their web browser. No special plugins or programs to download. It Just Works.

Goal setting and tracking

Users (mentors included) can set, track and prioritize their short, medium and long-term goals. Moreover, mentors can attach comments to each protégé's goals to provide feedback, request clarification or provide counselling and advice as to how the protégé might best proceed towards their specific goals. The boost goals tool suite provides an invaluable 'starting point' for focused communications between mentors and protégés: once you know a protégé's goals, tailoring a path of action and counselling is much more straightforward.

Invite a Friend

"Out of the box" the boost program has the tools to help your mentoring community grow in an organic way. Users can invite their friends and colleagues to join your mentoring community. This feature can be disabled if desired.

User Management

Site admin users have full control over the addition, editing, blocking and removal of user accounts. The boost community can be configured so that users can sign up for their own accounts without intervention from an admin user, or if a more controlled environment is desired, the system can be configured such that new users require administrator approval before becoming active. Admin users also have full permission to change user's passwords, disable their accounts, change them from mentors to protégés and vice versa and to configure all the user's settings (timezone, which sidebar content they should see, etc).

Content Management and Control

Users can edit content they 'own' and admin users can manage all site content. This allows mentoring community members to take responsibility for their own content with some degree of autonomy, but still allows the admin user to step in and take control over site content when required. This provides the best of both worlds: users publish their own content but administrators can exercise editorial discretion as required. If desired, users can be made to post their content into a "moderation queue" for administrator approval before being actually published 'live' on the site.

100% customizable

From the ground up, the boost program has been designed with flexibility as its core engineering goal. This allows the boost program to be reconfigured, extended or customized in content or function to whatever degree suits the client. There are a large number of extension features available for organizations which require a little more than the basic boost package provides. Examples include audio/video upload support, glossaries, internationalization/translation, image galleries, content reviews by users, scheduled publishing (publish on date X, unpublish on date Y), surveys, detailed user profiles, and many others.

100% Open Source Software

We build all of our solutions on 100% Open Source software which lets us provide high quality customized solutions at a very attractive price. Our use of Open Source Software delivers enterprise grade products at a small organization cost point.

We also offer reasonably priced custom development of completely new features and functionality. Just explain to us what you have in mind and we'll let you know what's involved.

To check out a demo of our boost program, click here.

Feel free to contact us with any questions.