Sixty percent of the time, it works every time: Peer leaders and data Whitney Louise Vasher Whitney Hawkins First Year Experience

Today’s Agenda The importance of peer-to-peer relationships in supporting the success of at-risk students Committing time and resources in order to use data to drive decisions Louise

Who We Were Louise

Program Focused Using programs to fix problems Hoping the right students attend Interacting with students who are already responsive to help Not reaching students that could benefit the most from intrusive support Louise

We needed to find a new solution. We realized this strategy was not meeting our goal of improving students’ success, and ultimately retention, particularly for at-risk populations. We needed to find a new solution. Whitney

Who We Are Whitney

Peer Driven, Data Informed We moved to be an office that focused on data-informed outreach and relationship building to influence at-risk student behavior and decision-making. Louise

Trust and Relationship Building Peer Driven Approach 30 Peer Leaders at the center of our work Orientation Pre-Enrollment First Year Peer Leader Trust and Relationship Building Louise

Data Informed Approach ? Whitney Peer Leader First Year Students

Data Informed Approach Whitney Peer Leader First Year Students

Leverage Strengths

Leading Data Lagging Data Early collection strategies Captures non-academic factors Peer-assessed (Stoplight) National norms (CSI) First 8 weeks! Students leave for non-academic reasons. Louise “Wait and see” End of semester metrics Academic-only focus After critical period

Evaluating Our Process Admissions Process First Semester Second Semester Orientation Louise Opportunity Demographics Grades Retention Grades Retention

Rapid Assessment – “Stoplight” Academic, Social, Engagement Point-of-entry peer assessment Leverage of orientation experience Intentionally designed dialogues Highly trained Peer Leaders Categorization of responses Whitney

Stoplight Results Whitney

College Student Inventory Ruffalo Noel-Levitz product Student Survey – “CSI” College Student Inventory Ruffalo Noel-Levitz product Student self-assessment Very high rate of coverage Drill-down capability Student-specific recommendations Whitney

High Priority Students CSI Demographics Stoplight High Priority Students Louise

Pair and Share Louise

What data do you currently have access to and how are you using it? What question(s) does your office have that you need additional data to answer? What opportunities do you have to collect data from students your office interacts with that you are not utilizing? Louise (Keep it to 10 minutes!)

Useful Data Whitney

Power of Well-Informed Peers Use data to augment and inform the work Peer Leaders do to build relationships and influence decision-making. Focus on coaching PLs, using data, incentivizing data-driven interactions to support success and retention. Whitney

Consistent supervision and feedback Coaching Consistent supervision and feedback Month-long training, weekly meetings Weekly, hour-long 1:1s Explain “the why behind the what” Encourage critical, strategic thinking Louise

Carefully select which data to share Focus on practical applications Using Data Carefully select which data to share Focus on practical applications Drive and inform in-person interactions 600,000 data points Filter 1:1 Louise Less is more Useful not just interesting

Incentivizing Interactions Whitney

Continuous Collection Value of longitudinal assessment Taking stock midway through year Students using data to prioritize work Collection serves dual purpose Driving student outreach Driving internal process assessment Whitney

What’s Next? Louise

Louise Planning Data Collection Interpretation Implementation Evaluation Louise

Pair and Share Whitney

What’s your muddiest point? What do you want to know more about? What has you most excited? How might this inform the committee’s work or your workgroup’s effort? What’s your muddiest point? What do you want to know more about? What partnerships will you need to develop to help meet your goals? Whitney

Q & A Whitney Hawkins (hawkins.557s@osu.edu) Louise Vasher (vasher.2s@osu.edu) Both!