Month: November 2019

Reflections and goals for the end of the year

Hailley Marie Fargo Overview, Reflection, Updates , ,

It’s Fall Break here at Penn State and things have been extra quiet in the library. For me, this break means shifting my focus to some bigger projects (like undergraduate research) without being pulled in a million different meeting directions. It’s a needed lull, but I will say that I miss the students and chatting about this project with Ally!

This morning, I sent out the sixth round of recruitment emails. Up until today, Ally and I had been only emailing a handful of our potential subjects, trying to take it a few colleges at a time. We felt that was a way to keep everything manageable and it has worked well so far. However, as we look at our completed interviews (6) versus the ones still left (18), we figured we should try to kick things into a little higher gear. 18 students across 11 colleges received an email from me today. Hopefully a few will be interested and Ally will come back to some scheduled interviews. After this round, we plan on doing two more recruitment periods before December 20, the last day of finals. I’m hoping that as the semester comes to a close, more students will have free time and interest in participating. Ideally, we’re trying to have 12 interviews completed by the end of 2019. It seems possible. We hope.

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Summit Presentation & Next Steps

arm38 Presentation & Publication, Undergraduate Research, Updates

Hi everyone, it’s Ally! Last week was an exciting time for Mapping the Student Engagement Journey. Hailley and I had gave our first presentation on this project at Penn State’s 2019 Student Engagement Summit. We started by explaining Hailley’s motivation to create this project and my motivation for becoming an Undergraduate Research Assistant. It was awesome to share our project with the Penn State community and express our enthusiasm about this research.

Hailley and I, right after our Student Engagement Summit presentation!

Presentation Takeaways

We had our audience brainstorm variations of each student engagement opportunity type. As a whole, our audience listed many examples of Undergraduate Research, Professional Experiences, and Peer Mentoring but listed less variations of Community-Based Learning and Self-Directed Student Engagement. These results were not surprising to me, as these lists aligned closely with the opportunities I’m most familiar with. This activity made me wonder how Penn State can better advertise student engagement opportunities that are less well-known. After all, some students may be more attracted to Self-Directed experiences than more structured experiences, such as clubs and organizations. Hailley and I talked about this more when we presented Harris’ map. During the interview process, Harris told us, “That was a big problem I had with Penn State…the way social life is structured here, it’s like ‘You have to join a club to have friends.'” I’m glad we could share this quote with faculty and staff. I hope this aspect of our presentation demonstrated that every Penn State student views student engagement differently, and that’s okay! Overall, I thought the Summit was a great place for our first presentation and I’m really looking forward to our next presentation opportunity. 

What’s Next?

At this point, we have six of 24 student interviews completed so we’re one fourth of the way through! Our goal is to have 12 interviews done before winter break. To accomplish this, we’re planning on emailing students from all the remaining colleges that we need students from. Sending all these emails at once may be tricky to organize. However, we think it’ll be a helpful way to recruit six more students before winter break. Next semester, we hope to finish the other 12 interviews before spring break. After that, we’ll have lots of coding, data analysis, and writing to do! I’m definitely enjoying the interview process but I’m also really exciting for the next steps. I have some experience with qualitative data analysis but I know this project will help me take my skills to the next level. I’m also really eager to see how all 24 interviews connect to one another and what overall takeaways Hailley and I will find for Penn State and other institutions. For now, Hailley and I have more recruitment emails to send out in the upcoming weeks. I can’t wait to get the next six interviews started!

Student Engagement Network Summit Presentation

Hailley Marie Fargo Presentation & Publication , , , , , ,

On Wednesday, Ally and I had the chance to present initial findings at the Student Engagement Network Summit. We had a packed room and lots of excitement around our work. It was exciting to share our work with a wider audience and to feel that those in the room were excited as well.

Below are our slides — feel free to reach out to myself or Ally if you have questions. We’re excited to hear your thoughts and see what’s next for our project.

The matrix interview guide

Hailley Marie Fargo Research Methods , ,

Back in June, when I was attending IRDL, I spent time to develop our interview questions. Initially, I created a standard interview guide. I had a series of questions that I planned to ask in the exact same order. However, as I worked on the guide, and reviewed our textbooks, I realized that this standard format might be too rigid for what I was hoping to do. If I asked the same questions over and over for each experience, an hour long interview would get pretty repetitive with students. When I stumbled across the matrix interview guide, I had a little eureka moment.

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Thoughts on Penn State Faculty Senate Reports

arm38 Reflection , ,

Penn State’s Progress

Hi everyone, it’s Ally! A couple weeks ago, Hailley suggested I review various Faculty Senate Reports  to learn more about Penn State’s progress with student engagement. These reports included the 2012 Task Force on Internships, the 2013 Task Force on Undergraduate Research, and timeline of Engaged Scholarship Initiatives from 2012 to 2017. I noticed three themes among these reports – a broadened student engagement definition, decentralization, and bench-marking.

Reoccurring Themes

My main takeaway from these reports is that Penn State has greatly broadened its student engagement definition over the past decade. Ten years ago, undergraduate research and internships seemed to be the focus of student engagement opportunities. Although these experiences are valuable, they do not capture other engagement experiences such as self-directed student engagement. Just four years ago, the 2015 Engaged Scholarship Update had developed only seven of the ten current student engagement categories. Overall, I think these reports demonstrate that Penn State has successfully improved upon their student engagement definition, expanding “what counts” as student engagement.  

Well Done Congratulations GIF by America's Got Talent

[Well Done Gif via GIPHY]

I also noticed decentralization as a common theme, especially with the task forces on internships and undergraduate research. This barrier was not surprising to me, given the large size of this university. These reports expressed a need for one, centralized location where students can look for internship and research opportunities.  From my student perspective, I think Penn State has followed through with this goal by creating the Student Engagement Network and will continue to grow in this area as the Student Engagement Portal is developed. However, I think Penn State still has room for improvement regarding the centralization of student engagement opportunities. Although the Student Engagement Network exists, I think new Penn Staters still feel overwhelmed and confused about where to look for opportunities. Additionally, individual departments offer opportunities through their own emails and websites. Although these department-specific announcements are useful for students, this independence also inhibits the centralization Penn State is striving to achieve. Some potential solutions to these setbacks could be introducing the Student Engagement Network at New Student Orientation and encouraging each college to get more involved with the network and upcoming portal.   

Bench-marking is also a theme throughout these reports. In almost every report, another university is mentioned for their successful student engagement practices. Big Ten universities were cited particularly often. I view this as a positive practice, as it helps Penn State to improve and model our programs after schools of similar sizes and cultures.  Bench-marking was especially evident with the Undergraduate Research Taskforce. This report suggests that centralization will only put Penn State “in the middle of the pack.” For Penn State to equal or exceed “Public Ivies,” undergraduate research must become part of the university culture through efforts such as increased grants and faculty recognition for undergraduate research.  I think this attitude should be applied to student engagement as a whole, as centralization alone is not enough for Penn State to make a name for itself in student engagement.  

Takeaways

These Faculty Senate reports assured me that our research project aligns with Penn State’s long-term goals for student engagement, such as centralization. Our project can also inform the university about whether current students know about and are using the student engagement resources in place. Overall, I think Hailley and I are on the right track!

Amy Poehler GIF

[High Five Gif via GIPHY]

Project Updates

Hailley Marie Fargo Updates ,

Hello all! As you can see, lots of exciting things have been happening with our project. Ally and I are deep in recruiting and interviewing students. It felt appropriate to do a little update:

  • So far, we’ve gotten four interviews completed. We’re 1/6 of the way through! Each interview has been fascinating in its own way and we’ve learned a lot, about those students, their engagement experiences, and Penn State.
  • Ally and I are putting final touches on our slides for the Student Engagement Network Summit, coming up on November 13. We are going to have a chance to run through it with my department, Library Learning Services, before the real deal. We will also share the slides on this website, once they’re ready to go.
  • Beyond emailing students and setting up emails, we’ve also been reviewing a lot of the Faculty Senate documentation, starting in 2010, around student engagement experiences. This work is helping to frame our research, and better understand the work done before us that has led to the Student Engagement Network and the 10 opportunity types. It has been neat to get Ally’s take on these reports!

Ideally, we’d love to close out 2019 with 12 of the 24 interviews completed. We’ll see how we do!