Assessment Details
Academic Year: 2019-2020 Level: Undergraduate
Campus Department: Mission & Ministry [UG and Grad]
Program Type: Co-Curricular Program [UG and Grad]
Program Name: 48hours (Link)
Description of Data Collection:
Over the past two years, our office has conducted 3 focus groups of program participants; 1 consisting of program leaders, 1 consisting of general participants, and 1 consisting of AHANA+ (a Boston College administrative acronym used to describe individuals of African, Hispanic, Asian and Native American descent) participants. All 3 focus groups were administered by graduate assistants in the Office of First Year Experience who had direct knowledge of the 48hours program in that they each attended multiple retreat weekends as part of their required duties. The results from the focus groups (consisting of general participants and student leaders) were then analyzed by our assessment cohort (described below) and scored against the program learning outcomes.
In addition to focus groups, data was collected by the Institutional Research, Planning & Assessment Office, sourced from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), the Boston College Undergraduate Experience Questionnaire (BCUEQ), the College Senior Survey (CSS), and the survey on Post-Graduate Plans (PGP) for the classes of 2014-2018. This data was also analyzed by our assessment cohort and scored against the program learning outcomes.
Review Process:
As a member of the Mission & Ministry Assessment Team, 48hours assessment was conducted with a cohort of myself and three other staff members and programs: Christine Cichello (Director of Christian Life Communities), Burt Howell (Director of Intersections), and Ryan Heffernan (Associate Director of Campus Ministry and current manager of the Arrupe International Immersion Program). Assessment decisions were made in consultation with other group members, including but not limited to: 48hours learning outcomes, data collection, and data analysis. The collective wisdom of the group was instrumental in assessing our Mission & Ministry programs. The cohort met monthly for two years in preparation for the program review in June 2020.
Resulting Program Changes:
In our assessment of the 48hours program, we identified a lack of concrete understanding of the learning outcomes of the program and a noticeable misunderstanding among participants around the program objectives related to creating new friendships. In order to mitigate the misunderstandings around the program, the 48hours marketing materials (emails, flyers, campaign copy) will no longer highlight messages of “making new friends” as the main reason to participate in the program. In conjunction with this effort, the program will seek two methods to better incorporate the learning outcomes into the retreat program itself. The first two learning outcomes will serve as the structural underpinnings for the Host talks on the retreat weekend. These two host talks, delivered by a member of the First Year Experience staff, will more closely follow a repeatable formula and provide a more consistent message to the program participants from each retreat through the lens of narrative storytelling. The third learning outcome will be incorporated more directly in the program by implementing a new exercise called “3 Columns” which invites students to reflect directly about the patterns and habits in their lives, as defined by the categories of their academic, social, and interior lives. After conducting this reflection, students will be invited to complete a reinvented “Covenant with Self” exercise that focuses on prompting them to create a practical strategy and hold themselves accountable to making improvements in these areas.
In comparing the student survey data and the focus group feedback from the previous assessment cycle in 2014 to the evidence from this current assessment, it appears that the previous changes were successful in mitigating the “temptation of grandiosity” phenomenon, as the student survey data and focus group feedback did not reflect this sentiment during this current analysis period.
Date of Most Recent Program Review:
In our assessment of the 48hours program, we identified a lack of concrete understanding of the learning outcomes of the program and a noticeable misunderstanding among participants around the program objectives related to creating new friendships. In order to mitigate the misunderstandings around the program, the 48hours marketing materials (emails, flyers, campaign copy) will no longer highlight messages of “making new friends” as the main reason to participate in the program. In conjunction with this effort, the program will seek two methods to better incorporate the learning outcomes into the retreat program itself. The first two learning outcomes will serve as the structural underpinnings for the Host talks on the retreat weekend. These two host talks, delivered by a member of the First Year Experience staff, will more closely follow a repeatable formula and provide a more consistent message to the program participants from each retreat through the lens of narrative storytelling. The third learning outcome will be incorporated more directly in the program by implementing a new exercise called “3 Columns” which invites students to reflect directly about the patterns and habits in their lives, as defined by the categories of their academic, social, and interior lives. After conducting this reflection, students will be invited to complete a reinvented “Covenant with Self” exercise that focuses on prompting them to create a practical strategy and hold themselves accountable to making improvements in these areas.
In comparing the student survey data and the focus group feedback from the previous assessment cycle in 2014 to the evidence from this current assessment, it appears that the previous changes were successful in mitigating the “temptation of grandiosity” phenomenon, as the student survey data and focus group feedback did not reflect this sentiment during this current analysis period.
Attachments (if available)