Assessment Details
Academic Year: 2020-2021 Level: Both Undergraduate and Graduate
Campus Department: Mission & Ministry [UG and Grad]
Program Type: Co-Curricular Program [UG and Grad]
Program Name: Divisional Programming
Description of Data Collection:
In January 2019, all members of the division of University Mission and Ministry met for a 90-minute discernment and assessment exercise. The evidence gathered at this meeting led us to discover a division-wide weakness in tracking student attendance in small groups (reflections, weekly meetings, orientation groups etc.). See E1A for Division of University Mission and Ministry, 2019 for more details.
In the summer and fall of 2020, our UMM UCLO committee struggled with how we would implement our plan during the pandemic. After much consultation with the Campus Ministers and Assistant Directors who originally called for the attendance tracking, we decided that we would not proceed with our pilot test of the File Maker Pro system. The Freshmen League, Ascend, the BC Bigs program and 4Boston were not comfortable with testing the system when volunteering in person was impossible. They did not think that it would be fair to the students or the organizers to test the system under these adverse conditions. Like many things during the pandemic, we realized that we would need to be patient and wait.
Review Process:
Representatives from Campus Ministry, the Volunteer and Service Learning Center, and Intersections constitute the Mission and Ministry UCLO subcommittee. We meet every two months during the academic year.
In the fall and spring of 2020 and 2021, we talked about a surprising new development on campus. The Office of Student Involvement (OSI) starting using a new dimension of a tracking system for students. It is part of a software package called Engage (owned by Anthology) that the University purchased. OSI labels the internal system MyBC, and they were eager to share the new tracking feature with other divisions. Campus Ministry tried aspects of it for attendance at the Examen and some Masses. The user experience is positive and seamless: through cell phones and QR codes, it takes seconds to sign in to an event. Several members of the UCLO have been in further conversations with colleagues in OSI about the pros and cons of the product and whether it might be better than the FileMaker Pro prototype we were planning to test pilot before the pandemic. We need to determine how the information from MyBC is organized and received for the coordinator of the programs to maximize efficient interventions after a pattern of absences.
Resulting Program Changes:
We still need to decide which product to test and when to start the test. The lingering uncertainty of the pandemic has delayed this decision. We do not know what volunteering and mentoring will look like in the fall semester. By mid-summer, we will consult with the stakeholders to answer these questions.
If we test either new system in the 2021 – 2022 academic year, it would include the following programs: Freshman League, Ascend, BC Bigs, and 4Boston. At the end of the year, the test phase will be assessed, and the division will decide whether or not to expand the system to other programs in Mission and Ministry. We will decide if the technology advances the formation work done in these reflection groups. We will report the results to IT, who said they are willing to advise us further.
This has obviously been a year of delay and waiting. Some aspects of the work of Mission and Ministry assessment have thrived even under the limited conditions. The assessment of individual programs such as the Liturgy Arts Group, 4Boston, and the Orientation team, has gone forward without much difficulty. We were still able to write Student Learning Outcomes, study survey data, and hold focus groups. We will analyze the data this summer and have E1As by June 2022.
But the division assessment on the attendance tracking problem — which has been the focus of this E1A — was derailed completely and we hope to be back on track in the future. There may be a hidden blessing in being required to wait. If we had tested the File Maker Pro system in the fall, we may have missed the opportunity to try the MyBC system and the chance at increased connectivity across platforms. The extra time for discernment may lead us to a better fit in the end.
Date of Most Recent Program Review:
We still need to decide which product to test and when to start the test. The lingering uncertainty of the pandemic has delayed this decision. We do not know what volunteering and mentoring will look like in the fall semester. By mid-summer, we will consult with the stakeholders to answer these questions.
If we test either new system in the 2021 – 2022 academic year, it would include the following programs: Freshman League, Ascend, BC Bigs, and 4Boston. At the end of the year, the test phase will be assessed, and the division will decide whether or not to expand the system to other programs in Mission and Ministry. We will decide if the technology advances the formation work done in these reflection groups. We will report the results to IT, who said they are willing to advise us further.
This has obviously been a year of delay and waiting. Some aspects of the work of Mission and Ministry assessment have thrived even under the limited conditions. The assessment of individual programs such as the Liturgy Arts Group, 4Boston, and the Orientation team, has gone forward without much difficulty. We were still able to write Student Learning Outcomes, study survey data, and hold focus groups. We will analyze the data this summer and have E1As by June 2022.
But the division assessment on the attendance tracking problem — which has been the focus of this E1A — was derailed completely and we hope to be back on track in the future. There may be a hidden blessing in being required to wait. If we had tested the File Maker Pro system in the fall, we may have missed the opportunity to try the MyBC system and the chance at increased connectivity across platforms. The extra time for discernment may lead us to a better fit in the end.
Attachments (if available)