ATC MENTORS

Following a discussion with @Samuel James, I realised we are both of the opinion that the prevalence of massive chunks of textual procedures in mentoring reports has become excessive. Forgetting the fact that we may of course be seeing changes through the introduction of Central Training for now (see page 7 of the November 2016 DSG meeting minutes regarding 'intense mentoring reports'), the fact that I see so many procedures in reports makes me, as the Operations Manager, worried. Why, you might ask? Well because mentoring reports are not official references for procedures, so if mentors feel they need to go into so much procedural detail, does that mean our documentation isn't covering what it needs to?

Going forward, I would ask all mentors to consider the following as you are writing a mentoring report:

Is the procedure that I am (writing / copying and pasting) into this report published anywhere else in an official capacity?

1. If the answer is YES, do not submit that report without replacing all of the procedures you have written out with references to either:
   - A section of an airport's vMATS
   - An ATC Procedure Change post (don't worry, the links won't change)
   - An official VATSIM UK or CAPXXX document
    
2. If the answer is NO, ask yourself why it isn't published somewhere else, and please do something about it! Is the procedure:
   - Not published anywhere? Contact Operations via the Helpdesk
   - Published, but out of date? Again, contact Operations via the Helpdesk

Why is it useful to reference, as opposed to just placing information in reports?

• Students may, after being directed to read a particular section, read further information that wouldn't have been written in a report but might be useful for their progression.
• Students will get used to finding procedures in the appropriate documentation, which may be useful in an exam situation when asked to locate, quote, or accurately describe a procedure.
• Students, if they rely on reports for procedures, have to remember which report the information was written in.
• Lead Mentors, and other mentors, are able to more easily monitor progress in a report which doesn't contain procedures that don't change depending on the student.