We frequently receive notifications from educators expressing interest in incorporating our virtual visits into their curriculum as mandatory or optional assignments, extra-credit work, or possible options for service learning, internships, or practicums. While we’re flattered to be considered for this work, we actually do not encourage it for the following reasons:

• We limit students who are new to the virtual visits to one hour per week, which is often not sufficient for most requirements.
• All students are required to complete a mandatory visit simulation in order to ensure that they have incorporated all of the lessons from our training into their visits, and are a good match for our program. For instance, volunteers who are shy and quiet would not be a good match for the program, despite having their heart in the right place and their willingness to work hard. Our evaluation process  could result in some students finding out that they cannot participate in the virtual visits. That could disrupt their plans for getting class credit for this work.
• Our program is designed to create friendships between the volunteers and the older adults, which means that we train them to socialize, not to practice the skills that they learn in the classroom. This may be contrary to the goals of their assignment.
• Students choose times that work with their schedules to volunteer. That doesn’t guarantee that there will be a senior available at that time. It could come to pass that some of your students sign up to volunteer with us, but do not have any availability that coincides with the seniors’ availability, resulting in them not actually getting to spend time performing this work.
• Volunteers are required to commit to 16 weeks on their virtual visits, which is often longer than a class.
• We do not provide formal evaluations of students who participate in the virtual visits for use in grading.

While we don’t recommend this for inclusion in your curriculum, we would appreciate it if you could spread the word about our program as a volunteering option to your students.

If students are interested in internship opportunities, we do regularly seek interns for various roles, including student outreach, senior outreach, project management, social media, and grant writing. Any students interested in these roles should send their resume to [email protected].