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

2. 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

3. Who We Were
Louise

4. 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

5. 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

6. Who We Are
Whitney

7. 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

8. 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

9. Data Informed Approach?
Whitney
Peer Leader
First Year Students

10. Data Informed Approach
Whitney
Peer Leader
First Year Students

11. Leverage Strengths

12. 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

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

14. 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

15. Stoplight Results
Whitney

16. 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

17. High Priority Students
CSI
Demographics
Stoplight
High Priority Students
Louise

18. Pair and Share
Louise

19. 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!)

20. Useful Data
Whitney

21. 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

22. 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

23. 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

24. Incentivizing Interactions
Whitney

25. 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

26. What’s Next?
Louise

27. Louise Planning Data Collection Interpretation Implementation
Evaluation
Louise

28. Pair and Share
Whitney

29. 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

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