Okay. Yeah. Alright folks, I think we're
gonna get started. Uh part of our intention is
that we will start on time, will end on
time. This is like quick hitter. This is
called assessment briefs for a reason. We want to
be brief and just give you an idea of things
that are happening at the university. So we'll try
to stick stay on time. We have three really
great speakers with us here today. Um, we
had one speaker of the 4th one who is coming
from human resources today. She got called into an
emergency meeting. So her talk is gonna be tomorrow
. So if you were here for that, if
you want to scoff and and stop away, that's
fine. Otherwise come back tomorrow, it's going to
be an interesting talk. Um thank you for coming
today. Uh This event is being sponsored by the
Office of Assessment and Evaluation, the Division of Student
Affairs and the University Libraries. We have a great
lineup of speakers throughout the week and if you have
not seen the posters upstairs yet, um on your
way out stop by there right outside or right near
the the circulation desk, There's about 20 posters up
there of assessment projects from across the university, both
academic and administrative assessment projects. Uh So we have
three great speakers today. I'm going to introduce them
all three, all three presentations upfront. We're gonna
kind of go through each of these back to back
. There should be some time for questions near the
end of each of these. Uh But if we
run out of time we hit the 15 minute allotment
for each talk, then we'll save some time at
the end. Or you can stick around and have
some coffee and cookies and talk with the presenters.
Um So there is coffee and cookies. If you
haven't figured that out, looks like some of you
found it feel free to get up and grab any
of those at any time. If there's some left
stuff, your pockets and your purses and book bags
, whatever you want, looking at you, Maria
. Uh huh. All right. So without further
ado, let me introduce our three talks for today
. Uh, Jessica Filip will be talking about uh
, table talk live first and then Laurie Fritsch and
Sarah kate Wladika, We'll be talking about assessment in
a program designed to to look at body image.
And then Montana Hall from, from the library will
be talking about library users and their needs. So
, you're up, Jessica. Thank you very much
for being here. All right, good afternoon.
Um, so yes, anyone, the sheet,
it said I was going to discuss the management survey
. I'll be happy to stay afterwards and discuss that
if anybody wants to. But what I was gonna
cover is table talk live, which is something we
do in dining services to get information from our students
. So once a semester we will have in every
single dining center, a chef and a manager um
, sit down towards the front or a busy part
of the dining center and you have some candy on
the table to encourage them to come on over and
they will try to solicit feedback. Hey, what
do you like about dining services? What do you
want us to change? And so like I said
, it's once per semester, but then the turnaround
is literally that day, so we get the feedback
the next day the managers will go through all the
feedback and what they'll do is they'll actually put into
a spreadsheet where it might be a, we're never
going to be able to do that one as you'll
see on some of the sheets that are going around
. I'm gonna cover these in just a moment.
There was one that we had for Hokie grill,
a water slide should be installed, so obviously we
won't be doing that one. Um so we uh
we have to put it into uh let's put into
categories of, sorry, we can't, we'll look
into or we will do it immediately. Um it
will be already doing and there are some that people
just don't know that that's actually an option and here
you go, so that's what the managers do.
They'll put it into the spreadsheet once they get that
completed and we know what they're going to be working
on and what stuff is already being done. Then
they send that over to me and that's where we
will actually use um these sheets here and you've got
a few this corner and just to get an idea
of what they are. Um these are we heard
your voice posters that go into the dining centers.
We also do put them on social media as well
, twitter or facebook, all those kind of things
. But it essentially says thank you so much for
taking the time to give us feedback. The ones
that were specifically using also had feedback from our makeup
survey as well. So we just combine the two
. But it has um, you know, based
on what you and others said, here are some
examples of what you suggested and what hokey girl has
done. I have the hokey girl sheet here.
So we just go with open hokie grill on Sundays
well, and here's the little arrow telling you unfortunately
, chick fil a doesn't allow us to open on
Sundays. A lot of the things that they request
from a franchise location, it is corporate rules and
we do have to follow corporate rules but then there
are some um that we can absolutely do and are
already doing and so we put those on there as
well. Um There especially the ones where we're doing
immediate feedback and tell them really quickly like hey we're
we'll get on it right now, we'll bring it
back. I think there was a smoothie over at
West end market that we took away Heaven forbid and
heard some feedback about where in the world is that
smoothie? And so I think two weeks later they
got the product back in and offered it again.
Um We had no idea was that popular. Um
So the other thing with that is um Well I
said they were at the table and they'll have the
two like a manager in a chef. there Not
only do they offer a thing of candy, but
there is also a chance that if they give feedback
, we will write their name if they want their
name and their hokey id number and whether or not
they want to be entered in for a chance to
win$25 in dining dollars. So that's another thing
that we offer up to them. Um And so
the two semesters that when we do them, the
times are different because each joining center is completely different
, some of them are packed here and we don't
want to necessarily do it in the middle of lunch
rush. So we try to offer a broad range
of time frames. Um so like a four hour
window at each dining center and offer them a chance
to come in and give it feedback. We also
will put on the posters once we're announcing, hey
, these are the upcoming dates. We will also
list on there that if you can't come to one
of these times and you have feedback, please email
the manager and set up a one on one time
because we really do value all the student input.
So um that's what we do and I know I
didn't even get like a five minute warning, I
feel like that. Do you guys want me to
go ahead and cover the dining services management stuff or
I can pop back up later if there's more times
, maybe somebody many times? Okay. All right
, well I'll jump into, you want to see
if you have questions about Oh sure, yeah.
Does anybody have any questions? Yeah. So out
of all the feedback with the students, uh I
presume to send you back in. Yes. So
which one do you think? You know which ones
do at home? It depends on each dining center
um And it depends on what is feasible. So
we have some like a smoothie one. That's an
easy one, We can quite easily bring that type
stuff back. Um The ones that aren't so easy
would be the as you and you'll see on some
of the ones going around, A lot of the
ones that are corporate related. I think even the
Hokie Grill one, it said that the chick fil
a fries are too salty. Unfortunately, chick fil
a corporate believes they're not salty enough, so we
get dunked on the other end by a chick fil
a. So it really does depend on the dining
center and what is actually feasible. We had somebody
that wanted us to move. Uh huh. Move
like how you would actually enter into the dining center
in terms of, okay, I want the line
to be here versus here a lot of times.
That's not always feasible just because well, the castro
, she was already installed over here and we can't
really move all that kind of stuff. So does
that answer your question? I hope. Okay,
Yeah, you take into account or, and do
you count how many students bring up the same thing
? Um Sometimes Yes, but sometimes no, so
even if we had, if it's an easy one
and won't be that expensive to us to implement a
lot of times, we'll just go ahead and do
it. Um There was one a few years ago
where somebody said, well why aren't the to go
bags over here as well? Well, that's an
easy one. That's a no brainer. Of course
, let's move them over there, thank you for
the suggestion. So things like that, even if
it's just one person will go ahead and do now
again, if it's a really expensive thing. But
You know, 50 people have all said that they
want this, we might look at that more in
depth than good questions. Any other ones you guys
have, I have a question except do you want
do any assessment after it's been done? Like do
you are at the end of the year or end
of the semester or anything like that to see,
you know what I mean? Like if the milkshake
or smoothie kept selling or whatever. Um I'm not
sure on that one actually. So each dining center
kind of does their own mini assessment within that.
I don't necessarily get to see. So I'm imagining
one I can definitely tell you not necessarily tied in
with the table talk live, but I do you
know that each dining center will look at sales figures
of, okay, this one's really popular. This
one we haven't sold in two years or whatever.
Let's scrap it from the menu. So yes,
some of those just depend. Okay. Yeah.
You sure you want to, this gets started.
So like, I guess how many years ago did
you do the tabletop live for the first time?
What was the impetus for? Um, I have
no idea. I'm sorry. I can, I
can get back to you with an answer. If
you leave me your information, I can get back
to you, but I have absolutely no idea.
I'm pretty sure that it was already being done when
I got here and that was seven or eight years
ago. I think. So. I think it
was already being done there and I believe the reason
they wanted to start it was we love feedback.
We actually more like negative constructive criticism type feedback than
the positive stuff. I mean a positive stuff is
always awesome, but that's not making us better.
So we always encourage the constructive criticism as well.
And so if we get that and we're going to
get better and better, I'm pretty sure that's why
it started so that we could hear what the students
I wanted. Yeah, we heard your voice.
Yes, choir and the water. Is that your
primary way? I'm getting baptist students and let them
know how you use. Yes, those, those
go in the dining center. So for instance,
if that one is the hokey real Warner, the
west end market one multiple ones of those. We
go up in the dining center at locations where students
will hopefully see them and then like I said,
we also sometimes supposed to on social media not necessarily
like the whole list, but it would be like
one or two big ones. Hey, yes,
we're going to do this one so further questions,
so I'm just curious if you have ever tried to
evaluate this method of getting back or like, have
you ever tried to do a survey trying to find
out if this method of getting feedback is working or
not? Um we haven't necessarily assessed if this is
the best route to go. Um I'm, and
I'm thinking the reason we haven't assesses because we get
a lot of feedback, um we have lots and
lots of feedback, so when I get the spreadsheets
, I mean there's a long laundry list of things
that they want and are suggesting in comments. Um
but I I don't know that we've ever looked at
, what's the better process, other things that we
do offer our online comment cards. So if somebody
, oh I'd never even heard about it. I
didn't even know I could give feedback that way.
They could always fill out a comment card online.
Um and we always encourage people um 100 satisfaction guaranteed
. So if you are ever not happy with your
experience in dining, you should always go seek out
a manager immediately. If you take it to go
and then find out that it's wrong Putting that comment
card because within 24 hours somebody should be back to
you. So yeah, know that jay check has
been made very high and their food status or Kendrick
for a long time and I wonder uh huh you
are a tribute to this backward. I'm just one
of your success is seen in that area. 100%
100%. I believe. The only way that we
get to be better is because of the feedback that
we get. Um if we never received any of
its feedback, we would still have the same complaints
for like the last eight years or whenever we started
this. So yeah, we were like heavily upon
hearing what the students and not just students but all
of our guests um what issues or concerns they had
. So yeah, I think you could pinpoint that
our success is based on that and our hard working
employees a little confident. Mm Thank you guys for
the function. Okay, thank you. About four
minutes. Okay share. I'll yeah, I'll do
it. I'll do a teaser. That's great.
I'll do a real quick teaser for the dining services
management surveys that we do every other year. We
want to know now I I previously talked about like
the guest point of view of the students, we
also need to know, what do our employees think
they like working here? Do they like their boss
? Um And we will look to an outside group
to do the survey for us. Um In two
years ago we had a group from the assessment office
I believe looking at Martha, I think that's the
group that we use. Um and this year we're
actually using um Jean anne Martha's graduate assistant to do
, we always use an outside party because we want
honest feedback. I'm not sure how honest somebody is
going to be if you know your own boss comes
up. Hey, what do you think of me
? The scale of 1 to 5 to one?
I hate your guts, I hate working for you
. They're never going to say that it's not going
to be the feedback they give and that's actually what
we need to hear. Um so that survey goes
out to all of our student employees, we also
have a genius actually went into the dining centers and
sat with computers and had people are non student Wagenaar
salary staff come up and fill out the survey.
We have a lot of our staff who are not
comfortable using computers, so jean and was nice enough
also to do paper surveys with them as well.
And then that feedback, we're still waiting to get
it for this year, she's working on the report
right now. Uh that feedback is amazing. We
always hear lots of things places where we can improve
what we're actually gonna do this year is also do
the, we heard your voice for our employees surveyed
this time. So, and Gina just suggested this
morning next year or two years from now. When
you go to do this, why don't you have
that sitting there saying, hey, remember you got
this chance? Here's what happened when you were being
that honest? We fixed this, this and this
. So um like I said, we love feedback
not only from guests but also from our employees.
And again, if you have more questions on that
one, I'd be happy to stay after and talk
about that. All right, thank you guys appreciate
it. Hi everyone. I'm Laurie Fritsch. I'm
Sarah Kay Velika and I work at the Women's Center
Virginia Tech Network in Health Education through the Shepherd Health
center. And our program is all about how we
used assessment to actually make programmatic changes and and utilized
it to mhm achieve the direction that we're going in
now with a specific project. Yeah. So um
what we're gonna do is start out kind of where
we started with this project a long time ago at
the Women's Center, we had a program called the
Health advocate Program and that was through um sororities and
what that um health advocate was do what they would
serve as a liaison kind of between the Women's Center
and the sororities. And they were trained on a
very wide variety of topics. So it might be
um sexual assault, domestic violence, relationship, violence
, kind of gender based violence theme. And then
we also talked about eating disorders, Some mental health
issues. And that was all in the 90s.
Um around four years ago, about in 2011,
the person that was running that program decided to leave
the women's center. And also she had given us
some feedback that it was harder for us to get
to recruit members from the authorities to be in the
program that they were feeling some can weren't really being
utilized as much in authorities. Um, because story
members were given the feedback while I go to my
friend as opposed to coming to this health advocate person
. Um, and so we were trying to figure
out a way to um, connect with authorities again
in a different way. And so one of the
things that we decide to do as a women's center
was do the Greek Womens Health Initiative Assessment in the
spring of 2011. And so we sent out a
survey 200 well to a lot of the sorority members
and about 153 um, responded to help us develop
a program that we thought would meet what their needs
were and to figure out what they were interested in
and what was the best way to get those programs
to them. Um, and then one of the
things that I thought about was using a peer education
program and health of the health advocates were a type
of peer educator. And so I worked with Lori
um and talk to her about joining with us to
discuss um peer education and what that might look like
with the Women's Center and sororities. So that's when
we decided to actually do a focus group with a
select group of from the women who had filled out
the initial greek assessments. So Sarah kate and I
then met with about six members. Um, and
we gained a further understanding of what they were really
looking for. And again, that showed up as
prioritized uh eating disorder, better body image, and
they still wanted that pure lead programming. So this
kind of solidified and started our relationship working towards this
common project. The third use of Assessment was I
run a national College Health Assessment for Virginia Tech every
other spring. So we knew that we wanted to
look at pieces from that particular assessment, but we
didn't know yet what we were going to use from
it because it's a very broad assessment that covers a
lot of health behaviors. Um Finally, we also
knew that we wanted to get qualitative feedback from the
sorority participants that we trained in order to validate the
direction that we were moving in and to gain more
support from Pan atlantic to make this one of their
educational components that they strongly recommend to their new chapter
members. So those were the four forms of assessment
that we knew we were going to use to change
our programmatic direction. So our overall objectives were of
course to identify the top 123 health issues related to
the sororities and what most impacted them and also how
they wanted to have those things delivered. So what
they perceived to be the most effective forms of dissemination
and delivery, an implementation plan, how we were
going to actually execute A large based programmatic plan because
there are about 500 new plus new chapter members each
spring. And that's quite an undertaking to get all
of those new members the education that we were hoping
to get to them. And then finally achieving that
programmatic support. We knew we were going to use
assessment to gain more support from Pan Atlantic and make
this our premier program rather than what we had been
doing in the past, which had been just one
large keynote speaker, which we had been finding was
less effective than we hoped. All right, so
we did the um as the Women's Center, Jean
Underwood is one of our program coordinators who used to
work at the women's and and she and I actually
developed the greek Womens Health Initiative Assessment. We had
153 sorority members who responded and the top issues that
they um reported back, we're eating disorders, depression
, anxiety, other mental health concerns, and sexual
harassment and that the main way that they thought would
be a successful way for us to get this information
to them would be through chapter programs that were led
by their peers. Um and so we really thought
about what that would look like and how. And
we also worked with the focus group to talk about
when you say eating disorders, what does that really
look like? Because sometimes what they're really talking about
his body image and that's impacting mental health issues,
that's impacting the way that they are operating in college
with leadership concerns and things like that. So after
we kind of gained that tighter knowledge that we were
looking at eating disorder prevention, but also body image
. We knew more specifically what we wanted to look
at with the National College Health Assessment. So we
have been running um since 2008, but I've just
combined the last three years and they look similar across
the years, but um this may be a little
hard to see, and I am going to go
off the camera, I'm sorry, but as you
can see here, hopefully there are a lot of
women who self described themselves. Almost 60% of women
at Virginia Tech specifically describe themselves as being the right
weight. However, in the light pink column,
It indicates that about 28 of them, Although they're
identifying as being the right weight, 28 of them
are still trying to actively lose weight. And that's
a really important piece for us because it tells us
that they are still trying to be on trend with
the national movement, caused by media, caused by
facebook, caused by everything. Thing that is coming
at them of achieving the thin ideal. And so
that is where brilliant Sarah kate comes in and and
saved the day. Yeah, talk about it.
All right. So, um, Basically, I
used to one of the things I used to work
at the counseling center and I worked with some women
at that point who had issues with eating disorders and
somebody image issues. Um, and one of the
things that I started to think about at that time
, this was probably 10 years ago is that we
really didn't work on prevention. We were working on
individuals who were coming in and they were already actively
participating in the symptoms of what may not be diagnosed
as the eating disorder, but could be, and
that even women who were not um diagnosed with an
eating disorder or were not that level of participating on
a regular basis. We're still distracted by their body
image, and we're still very concerned about their body
image, and it was really influencing the way that
they operate in their life. So I started to
investigate what was out there addressing prevention. Um,
there were only two programs, the one that was
the most successful was a program called reflections at the
time, and it was geared towards middle and high
school students. So I did some research about that
, Talk to the people a little bit about it
, but at the time it was really geared towards
high school students. Like I said, middle school
and I just kind of kept up with that program
for a couple years, kind of saw what was
going on. And then I was so excited to
find out. I went to the need of the
National eating disorder Association conference two years ago, I
guess or a year and a half somewhere around there
. And um there was a person there who was
talking about reflections which had now become the body project
and talking about how they had just developed it for
college students and that they had, just in the
past year or two started implementing it on different college
campuses and then we're gonna have a training program last
spring. And um so I came back and talked
to laura because we have been working together and said
, I really would love for you to help me
do this. Um I want to figure out how
to get this implemented, but your education is not
my strength and that is the way this program um
is organized, it's through peer education. Um and
so the two of us and then Kelsey Harrington who's
in the audience calcium, she went, she went
with us and then a student as well who works
with the health education or Christine went with us because
they like to have students there to train as well
and we were trained in this program and then we
started to implement it with heat and then we are
implement this semester with the sororities. Um, so
go ahead. Yes, So what we did was
the health education awareness team is health education education program
and they do a variety of health education and outreach
and education. Uh and the Body Project became one
of those educational outreach programs under what we have as
an umbrella called the Body Matters Project. It gets
very confusing with the Burbage, but it all coincided
at the same time unfortunately. And we had already
named are large outreach program, the Body Matters Project
, which is a year long efforts to help prevent
eating disorders and healthy and to help with healthy body
image. Um so we had in the spring of
last year implemented five workshop series. The Body Project
is actually 22 hour sessions that students come to um
for the first two hours and then a week later
meet again after practicing some body activism and personal challenges
related to the thin ideal and fighting fat talk.
Um and then we come back and reflect and talk
about further ways that we can uh promote healthy body
image and and B body activists. So it is
a pretty good time commitment. But one of the
things that we loved about the Body project was that
it was evidence based. So after just four hours
of programming, It could reduce the onset of an
eating disorder by about 60%, which is huge.
Um Sorry, go ahead. So because what it
does is it concentrates on creating cognitive dissidence. So
it wants the students to get in the room and
to practice saying positive things and challenging the thin ideal
or whatever messages they're getting from society um in a
safe space. And so it's a very structured um
workshop because it allows them to keep practicing that um
and give them the tools to practice it and they
have homework and things like that. So we knew
from that point, we actually acquired about 30 volunteer
sorority members from the panel in the community who were
interested in becoming body project facilitators. And we are
using that pool of women To go out and train
about 500 new chapter members this semester. So we're
very excited about this initiative. And after we did
their training, they had about 12 hours of training
to become facilitators, we got reflections from them to
get just the full buy in from the panel and
community because we knew that it had to be supported
by them. They had to really believe in the
program. So I asked them to specific questions.
After their program, I asked them, how did
the body project impact the way you feel and talk
about your body? And then why do you think
this would be a valuable program for new chapter members
? So can I have the people who have pink
reflections over here? Just read their responses. Oh
, sorry, Pink over here. Just can't awkward
. Just, okay, We'll start with you keeping
younger toes. After going through this program, I
definitely see my body in a more positive light.
I don't look at what I can fix or try
to alter. I now look at my best qualities
and focus on those. Okay. The body project
impacted me as well as my friends who didn't go
through the program. I became aware that many other
girls think and go through what I was used to
think and go through. Everyone has this insecurity,
but they aren't the ideal woman. And it helped
knowing that I was the only one feeling insecure about
my body. The body project has made me spend
less time worrying about what I eat and how much
I work out. In addition I spend my spend
way less time in the area worrying about how I
look and I was this frees up a lot more
time to spend studying and doing activities. I enjoy
call You have two more over here. The body
project changed my whole outlook on how I talk and
feel about my body. I feel more confident.
My own skin realized I didn't stop comparing myself to
my french and other people because my body is unique
in its own way, shape and form. Do
you have one more? Okay. Whenever someone else
talks about their body, I know how to respond
in a positive way. It's two years away from
what the body looks like, how the body great
and then from my blue responses, why do you
think this would be a valuable program for new chapter
members? I think this program is perfect for new
members entering greek life were as worthy tend to have
that talk a lot friends when you're getting ready for
functions or to go out. We are able to
educate them that this is not good together, create
a supportive environment where they all respect each other.
I think this program would be amazingly beneficial to change
the conversation about our bodies within the community calcium doing
this program will show synergy between sorority chapters because it
will be girls from all different sororities who facilitate and
participate and many uh many sororities are focused on womanly
character and building strong girls and I believe this is
a step in the right direction. So what we
will continue to measure after this workshop series, I'm
sorry you had one every girl went through this program
and actively participated. I know that is really knows
what proved. Yeah, So this really clinched it
for us as far as gaining that full planalytics support
and um what we will now measure. We have
, I think 53 workshops scheduled for this semester to
hopefully get around 500 new chapter members through. And
what we we are going to measure with that group
of women is if they have a reduced importance related
to being thin and how hopefully an increased uh feeling
of how they feel about their bodies. And then
we're also going to measure inter sorority relationships because that
was a piece that we weren't looking for. But
the facilitators were so excited to meet one another and
bond in that way. They were like oh my
gosh! Like this is breaking down the sorority walls
within each silo which we didn't even think would happen
or think to happen. So, um, we're
looking for great things in the future as far as
those relationships with one another and just woman within herself
questions. Yeah, Jessica. So you said about
500 people going to Uh huh. All right,
Those are new chapter members. Yes. We have
it also running within Health education, well, health
education awareness team To the general population. How many
women are approximately 3000. So, yeah, so
our our goal is to do, to aim for
new chapter members because they have the required educational component
that first year. Um and then we will actually
pull uh new facilitators each year from that group of
women who has just gone through it. So it
will be just like an ongoing cycle and that seems
like a manageable way for us to get it started
um to start that way and to continue it because
each session can only have 8 to 12 women in
it, which makes the so it's not only a
two part series, but it's intimate because they are
doing like role playing. They're going around the group
saying you're saying you have to limit how many people
can be in it to manage some of that questions
. Yes. Has there been any discussion about collaboration
with National Panhellenic Council authorities? Let me speak to
. Um we we've talked to lee a little bit
about that and also um the developer of the program
um getting running right now, Caroline Black Becker has
talked about that and is working with them to a
certain extent and we are exploring at this point.
Yeah. Yeah. Are you going to change the
way you assist us in the future? We're going
to ask the same questions I think for this year
this is our goal to see how it's redo these
three components on the bottom. Um and sure I'm
always open to change, you know, one year
, maybe this, another year, maybe the process
of how, how we implement the program. I'm
not I'm not quite sure yet. If you have
ideas, I'd love to hear that way. Right
baseline. Right? Yeah. Right. Because we
want to really measure is this making a cultural shift
right within the community and the people, she's done
some of that we haven't done here, but that
would be something for us to do here at Virginia
Tech. It's been done in a broader level,
um, like a different universe, different areas,
but we haven't done it here because we just started
it. You have a question. So your original
assessment was the Greek womens Self Initiative and you probably
said because you maybe go over again where that came
from and how it was validated. Okay. So
, so Janet Underwood and I developed it at the
Women's Center and we sent it out to a number
of women, I can't remember at this point right
now how many women were sent out to and we
got 100 and 53 responses I can't speak to right
this moment about how it was validated. Um and
we use that information to see what trends we saw
and then decided to meet with the women in the
focus group to get more information about what they actually
meant when they, because some of the questions we
asked them were fairly broad and we really want to
know what more they meant about that, which is
why we decided to focus group. It was also
really looking at what topics they felt were relevant to
them, what they wanted to learn more about and
how they wanted to learn it. Yeah. Yes
. And the feedback that assessment is what informed your
decision to choose and move forward and invest in the
body. I the first three components were really how
we move forward. So the the initial assessment,
the focus group and the National College Health Assessment.
And then the fact that it was validated and reliable
, it's been run by um the people that develop
the program for approximately 5 to 10 years. And
so there's a ton of research on it and that's
one of the other reasons as we were getting the
information that this was what the authorities and students wanted
and they had this that they had already worked on
and done research with it. So that's how we
decided. Thanks everyone. Oh thank you. I
love this project for three reasons. one you all
use uh data from different sources, both quantitative and
qualitative and sort of mash that up. Um I
like that you show that assessment really is a team
sport. We have multiple people, multiple departments working
together. And then I think most importantly that you've
taken that data and you've applied it to something and
change the lives of students. Thank you. Thank
you. Hi everyone. Well there's a lot of
people in here. Okay. Um So I'm a
nina. I am the community engagement librarian and I
liaison to a couple of departments communication and sociology and
a a very small pocket of the english department that
focuses on Children's literature. Um So my previous role
within the library was the learning comments and assessment library
. And so this project was born out of that
role. One of the things that we looked at
a lot in the libraries is trying to figure out
what our users doing while they're in the building.
Um Some of you might have noticed when you walked
in today that the library looks very different than it
did a few years ago and it's changing. Um
Some days I have I don't know where the furniture
went, you know, it's like, wait,
but that was there yesterday. Where did it go
? So these things are changing really rapidly, um
and so trying to figure out are we are the
changes that we're making, Are they the right ones
? Are they good ones? Are they effective?
Are they what the students really need? So this
is one of the projects born out of that kind
of set of overarching questions. So is anyone familiar
with the idea of personas? I'm hearing, muttering
? Yeah, maybe it's okay, that's fine.
So basically what a persona is is it's an overarching
archetype of our users, and the way to make
these really useful is to drill down and get a
lot of detail. So as you're sitting down and
thinking about what our users are doing and you're creating
these archetypes of who are users are like, do
they have a dog? Do they have kids at
home? Are they are they working three jobs.
Are they using the library? They're running in and
grabbing books and running out the door. Are they
hanging out for hours and hours at a stretch and
really drilling down and getting that level of detail and
then building this character sketch of a user with that
level of detail. And given him a name,
jane, the new user or bobby, the researcher
, Richard the researcher. It's like there's supposed to
be some alliteration to it, which I'm not very
good at. Um So the tool personas came out
of user experience predominantly with computer web design, that
sort of stuff. It's used a lot in and
a variety of settings everybody's kind of taking these on
. But they're super heavily used in web design,
research and advertising and libraries are using these all over
the country. There's a couple of different ways to
go about using it. One you can start with
the idea of, Okay, Richard, the researcher
, what does he do? What does he need
? Where's he coming from? Sit down you guys
and sketch him out and think about it and then
we'll take it back to one of our researchers and
have him validate. Is this what you're doing?
Is this what you need? Is this how you
think The way that we're doing is a little bit
differently and a little bit more time intensive. We're
doing one on one interviews so far. We've done
15. Our goal is 30, which is a
very teeny sample of the actual number of people on
this campus, But I thought, well 30,
we do 30, we have 30,000 students. It's
kind of sample size. Not really. Um,
so it's been really time intensive so far. We've
recruited all over campus, we're recruiting in the building
. Um, so we've done 15, 9 of
which have been faculty and staff very fortunate that someone
over in the um, language department sent it to
their faculty and said, please participate. And so
I have a huge a sample of language and literature
folks. So I know exactly what they're looking for
. I don't have, this isn't a guessing game
on their part. Um, so we've gotten to
grads and an undergrad in one community member. So
this spring, the hope is to finish this out
and get the other 15 predominantly from undergrad and graduate
students. I'm also hoping to get a decent sampling
of international and if I can find some nontraditional students
I'm gonna toss them into because I think that's a
really important sample to to learn from. Um So
all right, so I'm not actually looking at my
one slide here, I should do that more often
. Um So I'm doing this project. It's there's
a small team of us in the library that's working
on this and then um we're doing the project in
conjunction with the University of Louisville Libraries. We've created
all the documentations together. We've gone through I.
R. B. Together, we've done the whole
thing together and that way at the end of this
we can come back and take our data and say
, what does this look like between your institution in
my institution? And are there ways that other libraries
across the country can crosswalk this and build their own
or take the data that we've found and use it
to inform their spaces, services and technology. So
that's the basic just to the project. Any questions
? So your goal is to use these um participants
to develop personas. Yeah. So to kind of
take the information that they give us in there.
One hour long interviews, we ask about space service
technology, um, collaboration in group work. We
asked for a demographic information to try to figure out
who they are and where they are. And one
of the things we're looking for between the two schools
, uh, University of Louisville is a mid size
urban commuter school, predominantly and whereas were heavily residential
. So figure out what, So they're going to
have a lot more nontraditional students just as a matter
of you know who they are, What are the
what do they need differences? So try to compare
those. Did I answer your question four? No
, I think the library is not some surveys in
the past in the last one was but is what
you're doing these interviews related to this service. Um
So what well so the last survey that we did
was April of 2014 and actually one of the posters
up Stairs is about the survey that we did in
April 2014 and Charlotte lead that and initiative. Um
at the end of the day, I'd love to
take this project and a couple of other qualitative research
projects that we're doing in the building and then compare
it and kind of mash it all up and see
what comes out. Um I have to get through
this first. So one thing at a time.
But yes, that's the hope. So you said
you're doing In person interviews with? Right, so
could you talk a bit more about how long the
interviews are typically and what kind of questions? Yeah
, sure, sure. So um the interviews are
typically 45 minutes to an hour, depending on how
chatty the person is. And like um I try
really hard my team and I try really hard to
stick really closely to the interview transcript. Uh The
the problem, the script, yeah, the the
actual script itself um that works really well sometimes and
other times you kind of hit it off with the
person and you talk about a lot of things that
may or not be and I try to do these
very we try to do this very conversational. Um
So they're about an hour long. We asked them
to fill out a map where they were on campus
the last time they were on campus. So did
they go to their office? Did they go to
the glc? Did they go have lunch? Where
did they go while they were on campus? Um
We ask a lot about group work, how classes
have changed in the course of their either education or
a variety of things. Um The last section is
all about services. So we asked them like when
you go somewhere, how do you learn about the
services that are provided and how do you expect to
be treated when you walk into a place where you're
going to get service? Um And with the hope
that that component will help us better manage our services
within the building. Um So lots of what kind
of technology to use and how does that affect your
workflows? So a really broad variety of questions.
I know, we think we're all unique, but
how many personas have you identified? Um So because
I only have two undergrads and three graduate students,
um, I have a really better, I have
a much better understanding uh, faculty needs and what
I'm figuring out from faculties is faculty are using the
library as a place to come in and study.
We're using the library for our resources. Were using
a lot of the document delivery and um, e
books that were faculty, you're coming in with grabbing
books and running out the door. Um, so
Sakhalin needs look a lot different than student needs obviously
, and I really need a bigger sample size to
give a flesh that out. Would it be helpful
for us to encourage students? We needed to come
and I will give you my car. How are
you recruiting? So I posted to the VT Daily
News, We put flyers up around campus. I
believe that a digital flyer went up in various places
around campus. That has digital flyers. I haven't
seen them, but that doesn't mean they're not there
. Um, we are recruiting in the building with
the digital signage and we've tossed flyers out on tables
in the building. Um, so a variety of
methods have sent stuff to the GLc. I keep
meaning to send stuff to the Grand Oil Center.
I've not made that email yet. Um, so
there's a kind of a variety of methods, some
of which have been more successful than others. I
can tell you that when we put them up on
the digital signage in the building, um uh freshman
emailed me at like one o'clock in the morning asking
to participate. So That's the only one I know
that works in house. Um, I was gonna
recommend. Yeah, yeah, we've talked over the
library uses those for lots of other stuff and I
know that we've talked about it. I can't remember
. Um Coffee cups. Oh like give them a
free, Is somebody taking notes? That's a really
good idea. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So
no I didn't. Um So we're On all the
stuff we're telling people that the incentive is something a
small gift under$5. And we've bought coffee mugs
. Really nice Stoneware coffee mugs. And I'm putting
I'm a tea fanatic and I'm putting tea bags and
around Halloween there was Halloween candy. And it's so
my kids didn't need it. Yeah. Not very
nice of me but everybody else was appreciative. Yeah
. You mentioned personas we use for in general.
What specifically does the library? So um so I
think we're really hoping to be able two allow these
to inform our decisions moving forward. As we think
about what services that we're offering, what services do
we want to offer, what services do we need
to think about not offering? Um We're adding technology
in this building like. Crazy. Is it working
? Are people using it? What else do we
need to think about as we move forward? Um
And then um there's several questions in there about the
electronic databases, kind of our online presence and what
that looks like and how can we improve those services
as well? So, and then kind of does
the furniture work? It works for some people.
It doesn't work for others and that's okay. So
it sounds like I'm new to this idea, Persona
. Sure. It sounds like it's interviews. And
then with the data, you different interviews, you
can group and create the themes of people and people
, which is really interesting. I'm just wondering why
I think you also lose the individualization. You do
that right? Because kind of grouping someone into a
certain area category, right? Why did you decide
to go to persona framework rather than just interviews and
collecting data and trying to go from there? So
the great thing about persona is that they're a really
strong storytelling tool. And if you can drill down
and get that super micro level data, the detail
rather uh like Richard, the researcher uses the library
in these ways because he's doing these other 15 things
that are important and he's writing grants and he's doing
this and you really drill down to that the personal
level you have to make these really personal or you
lose your audience. Um and so I think that's
where they're really strong. I think the overall data
will also inform. But for the personas, the
strength of that is used as a storytelling tool because
then I can take it to admit and say here's
your storytelling tool and they can then take it out
further. What would the person also allow you to
personalize the library? Absolutely. Because then you can
cater it to that undergraduate that's in here all the
time and then you can cater it to that undergraduate
that's never here. If you get enough data to
support that. Yeah. Any other questions. Great
, thank you so much. I think the library
serves as an excellent example uh for I saw this
is a great technique, I think it can be
used in multiple ways across the university. Uh What
I I really find amazing about the library is not
only uh does the faculty and staff of this facility
look at how, how customers clients, patrons use
the facility, the technology, um their satisfaction,
but they're also looking at learning outcomes like information literacy
. So they're looking at a complete package of all
of the things that they're involved in at the university
or in the library here. So kudos to you
while it's really this is a really interesting project.
Um Especially like that you're doing it with another university
to make some comparative analysis. There seems to be
some immense potential that this could uh uh sort of
get out to other institutions and you can have a
huge pool of data. Could be pretty interesting.
Thank you all for attending today. On your way
out the door, please grab some cookies and coffee
. And uh don't forget about the posters upstairs.
Uh Same time, same place tomorrow. And another
set of presenters. So I hope to see you 988 00:52:23.820 --> A:middle L:90% . Uh