We’re back! 2020 is starting off fast and furious and here at Penn State and we are just beginning week three of the semester. It has been wonderful to have Ally back in the office and we are ready to conquer the second half of this project. Some of our work has stayed the same (recruiting students and interviewing them) and other parts are new (analyzing the interview transcripts, writing manuscripts, and presentations). Lucky, we have a great support system, within the Libraries, at the Student Engagement Network, and with colleagues in the LIS field to help and encourage us as we move into these new parts.
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Reflections and goals for the end of the year
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.
Project 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!
Coming soon: our first presentation!
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:
- What do you currently know about how students you work with navigate the student engagement landscape?
- How would/do these findings impact or influence the work you do with student engagement?
- 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!