Month: October 2019

Why I wanted an undergraduate research assistant

Hailley Marie Fargo Reflection, Undergraduate Research ,

It was probably a year ago when I started thinking about this research project. The call had just opened up for the Student Engagement Network Faculty Academy positions and I knew the IRDL applications would open in December. As I put together my various essays, CVs, and budget proposals, I knew I wanted to have at least one undergraduate student research assistant.

My motivation for having a student was multi-faceted. Continue reading →

Let the interviews begin!

arm38 Uncategorized
Hi all, it’s Ally. These past few weeks have been really exciting for Hailley and I as we progress farther with this project. Interviews have officially started! Our first interview was last week with an enthusiastic student from the College of Health and Human Development. This randomly selected student is actually a good friend of mine! Penn State really is a small world once you’ve been here for a while. 

Interview Reflections

I took the lead on the interview questions and I think the process went well overall. Our questions seem to flow really nicely and elicit the information we’re looking for from students. During these next few interviews, I’m hoping to improve my probing skills by asking more intentional, off-script questions. Although our scripted questions are important for data collection, I think it’s also crucial to talk with students about their unique experiences that may not fall into our prepared question categories. For example, last week’s interviewee was a transfer student from another university. Because of this unique characteristic, I adjusted some of our questions to investigate how transfer students may experience student engagement at University Park. I’m hoping to apply this spontaneous probing to my upcoming interview this Wednesday. 
Behind the scenes of last week’s interview! We ordered tons of stickers so we’re prepared for the next few weeks.
I’ve already noticed intriguing patterns in the interviews I’ve led, which is really exciting. Many students seem to take on student engagement opportunities for practical reasons such as resume building or hands-on experience in their fields. However, students also seem to have social motives like meeting new friends or making this large university feel smaller. Hailley and I are eager to see how these motivations differ between colleges. I predict that some colleges may promote exploratory student engagement while others strongly emphasize career-related opportunities. This difference among colleges could have really interesting implications for how students present their engagement opportunities and market themselves to employers. 

This Week’s Plan

This week, Hailley and I have two interviews to complete. We’re also emailing students from our sample to schedule more interviews for October. On top of scheduling, Hailley and are preparing our presentation for the Penn State Student Engagement Summit. I’m so eager to share our research with the Penn State community. Hopefully we’ll gain some helpful feedback and new supporters for this project. We definitely have busy but exciting weeks ahead of us! 
happy full house GIF

Building our data set to recruit our participants: A work in progress

Hailley Marie Fargo Research Methods, Updates , ,

Yesterday, Ally and I sent out our first round of recruitment emails.

[Linda Belcher excitedly waving her hands, via GIPHY]

As we anxiously check to see if any have responded to our inquiry, it’s probably a good time to return to the question of: how are recruiting these students? What did we end up with for our data set?

Continue reading →

Coming soon: our first presentation!

Hailley Marie Fargo Presentation & Publication , ,

Ally and I are excited to share our upcoming presentation (and our first joint presentation about this project). We were invited to speak at the second annual Student Engagement Summit, hosted by Penn State’s Student Engagement Network. This will be a great opportunity to share updates with Penn State colleagues who are interested and invested in student engagement. And of course, to share our progress on this research project!

This year at the Summit, we were encouraged to make sure our attendees leave our session with something to take back with them. In that spirit, Ally and I came up with three questions we want attendees to consider that we think will help with takeaways:

  1. What do you currently know about how students you work with navigate the student engagement landscape?
  2. How would/do these findings impact or influence the work you do with student engagement?
  3. Based on the current chart of engagement types and their variations, what variations are missing? What would you change about the definitions of each engagement type? What resonates with you?

We hope these questions will spur interesting conversations and we also hope we will have a handful of student journey maps to share. After our presentation, we will share our slides on this blog, for those unable to attend.

If you’re at Penn State and available to attend the Summit, you definitely should. Registration opened last week!

Research in Collaboration: Why I’m talking about my research

Hailley Marie Fargo Reflection ,
If you know me or have collaborated with me before, you know I have a certain energy when I’m really jazzed about something. The sort of energy where you can truly sense my enthusiasm as it oozes out of me. And when I begin, I give you a look that says, “Buckle up, I’m jazzed and you’re about to know why.”

Right now, I feel that way about this research project. As Ally mentioned, we have been testing out our questions and the mapping activity itself. We’ve done four practice interviews and I feel my head is full of ideas. I see so many connections from these interviews to the theory that exists within higher education on student engagement, and to the educational framework that the Student Engagement Network (and Penn State Faculty Senate) has been working on for years. I can only imagine what sort of information we’ll have to share once we’ve done the 24, on-the-record, interviews. I believe this project has tremendous potential, and the interviews we’ve done so far have confirmed that.

Continue reading →

Practice Interviews & Map Updates

arm38 Uncategorized
Hi everyone, it’s Ally with some research updates! Now that we have our sample, Hailley and I have been revising our interview questions and practicing. We’ve conducted two practice interviews so far. First, Hailley interviewed me and tested her questions out for the first time. After removing some repetitive questions and adding a few wrap-up questions, we interviewed an intern from the Student Engagement Network. This Friday I’ll take the lead on two practice interviews! I’m definitely feeling more confident with our process and can’t wait to give it a shot. 

New Map Ideas

In preparation for Friday, I’m thinking more critically about what we want these maps to look like. During our practice interviews, Hailley and I noticed that some aspects of student engagement weren’t captured by the maps (length of involvement, leadership roles, connections between experiences, etc). Yesterday I created a new map of my student engagement journey that includes some of these pieces. I followed the same color key that Hailley and I established last week. However, I added timelines on the bottom to show how long I was involved in ongoing experiences, such as undergraduate research and organizations. I also added blue circles to indicate leadership roles and pencil arrows to indicate connections between experiences. 
Here’s my practice map from yesterday!
I’m still deciding how I feel about this new map. I think it provides more information about my engagement experiences that went undocumented in my original map. However, the new lines/circles definitely make the map more crowded. Hailley and I are also back and forth about showing an example map to students during interviews. On one hand, this will standardize the maps and help students communicate the information we’re looking for. However, this would also limit the student’s creativity. The differences in maps could be really intriguing to analyze. For example, I put stickers near one another on my map while the Student Engagement Intern layered her stickers on top of one another. I’m eager to see the creative differences that emerge in this week’s practice interviews.

Big Things Ahead!

Hailley and I are planning to check for similarities/differences in the maps from this week’s practices interviews and then decide whether we need an example map for standardization.  After we make these decisions and practice more interviews we’ll be ready to contact our sample. In the meantime, I’m reading some chapters on creating a code book for qualitative data. This will be an important step for this project so I’m excited to learn  more about the process. Overall, I’m really looking forward to seeing our code book come together and leading interviews this Friday. I’ll definitely post some updates next week!
map GIF by Topshelf Records
   [Map Gif via Giphy]