Presentation Format

Interactive Workshop

Intended Audience

All Audiences

Program Abstract

Drowning in data? You’re not alone.

Data should be working for us, helping us reflect on our effectiveness, demonstrate our impact, and advocate for our field. But most institutions see only short-lived benefits incommensurate with all of the effort expended to collect and management tracking and assessment data.

Participants of this workshop will return to their institutions prepared to begin locating and seizing the real wisdom hidden within their growing myriads of disconnected, incompatible datasets.

Presentation Description

In this session, we will:

  • Contextualize the community engagement field’s data management needs
  • Introduce a CE Data Cycle, a framework that participants can use to conceptualize CE data as a system
  • Guide participants through a basic CE data management needs assessment
  • Review two approaches for meeting those needs, including pros and cons for each, and best practices and lessons learned about both approaches
  1. Align with staff in Institutional Research and Information Technology
  2. Deploy technological solutions
  • Brainstorm how to meet gaps in CE data management
  • Outline data management objectives for 2016-17 and concrete next steps to achieve them

Rationale for the topic

In 2014, when the Connecticut state chapter of Campus Compact surveyed its 30 higher education institution members about their primary needs, “data management” topped the list. Institutions that responded proactively to the early promotion of systematic tracking and assessment of their SL & CE activities are today a) swimming in raw data about program minutiae, and b) unable to leverage that data to support their most critical program objectives.

Civic and community engagement programs mean to influence complex and, in some case, seemingly intractable conditions. Detailed data about one semester, one course, or one activity at a time serves immediate assessment needs, but a broader view is necessary to assess the longer-term transformations we facilitate.

As the resident CE assessment director at Loyola University New Orleans, I attempted to synthesize years of pre-existing tracking and assessment data into a cohesive whole that could be used to shed light on the program’s larger questions, the ones whose answers took longer to appear than a single semester. After 3 years, I compiled roughly 40-50 approaches that didn’t work. And every semester, I watched the tower of data grow in size and complexity, as the assessment capacity of the CE practitioners developed. Meanwhile, a national conversation rages on about the value of higher education for students and our society. As much as institutions are investing in systematizing the assessment of CE, the ROI should include establishing a case to meaningfully respond to questions posed to our individual campuses and to the larger field and higher education environment. But instead, after pulling immediate results from each instrument, most assessment datasets are retired, archived by whatever means is most convenient in the moment.

The objective of this workshop is for each participant to devise the strategy for mining bigger-picture, longer-term benefits buried within the towering rubble of data looming over their program. They will begin by identifying their community CE data management needs, and exploring tactics to begin meeting those needs.

Goals for the workshop

Participants will have

  • a clearer understanding of their CE Data Management needs
  • a focal point for improving their CE Data Management Cycles over the next year with benchmarks
  • increased capability to engage campus offices with complementary skills (Institutional Research, Information Technology)
  • criteria to apply when considering which technological solutions might meet their needs

Location

Room - 210

Start Date

4-14-2016 9:15 AM

End Date

4-14-2016 10:30 AM

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Apr 14th, 9:15 AM Apr 14th, 10:30 AM

It’s a Data Job, But Someone’s Gotta Do It

Room - 210

In this session, we will:

  • Contextualize the community engagement field’s data management needs
  • Introduce a CE Data Cycle, a framework that participants can use to conceptualize CE data as a system
  • Guide participants through a basic CE data management needs assessment
  • Review two approaches for meeting those needs, including pros and cons for each, and best practices and lessons learned about both approaches
  1. Align with staff in Institutional Research and Information Technology
  2. Deploy technological solutions
  • Brainstorm how to meet gaps in CE data management
  • Outline data management objectives for 2016-17 and concrete next steps to achieve them

Rationale for the topic

In 2014, when the Connecticut state chapter of Campus Compact surveyed its 30 higher education institution members about their primary needs, “data management” topped the list. Institutions that responded proactively to the early promotion of systematic tracking and assessment of their SL & CE activities are today a) swimming in raw data about program minutiae, and b) unable to leverage that data to support their most critical program objectives.

Civic and community engagement programs mean to influence complex and, in some case, seemingly intractable conditions. Detailed data about one semester, one course, or one activity at a time serves immediate assessment needs, but a broader view is necessary to assess the longer-term transformations we facilitate.

As the resident CE assessment director at Loyola University New Orleans, I attempted to synthesize years of pre-existing tracking and assessment data into a cohesive whole that could be used to shed light on the program’s larger questions, the ones whose answers took longer to appear than a single semester. After 3 years, I compiled roughly 40-50 approaches that didn’t work. And every semester, I watched the tower of data grow in size and complexity, as the assessment capacity of the CE practitioners developed. Meanwhile, a national conversation rages on about the value of higher education for students and our society. As much as institutions are investing in systematizing the assessment of CE, the ROI should include establishing a case to meaningfully respond to questions posed to our individual campuses and to the larger field and higher education environment. But instead, after pulling immediate results from each instrument, most assessment datasets are retired, archived by whatever means is most convenient in the moment.

The objective of this workshop is for each participant to devise the strategy for mining bigger-picture, longer-term benefits buried within the towering rubble of data looming over their program. They will begin by identifying their community CE data management needs, and exploring tactics to begin meeting those needs.

Goals for the workshop

Participants will have

  • a clearer understanding of their CE Data Management needs
  • a focal point for improving their CE Data Management Cycles over the next year with benchmarks
  • increased capability to engage campus offices with complementary skills (Institutional Research, Information Technology)
  • criteria to apply when considering which technological solutions might meet their needs