Resource:How to measure the success of your uifresh initiative

Introduction

Launched in March 2015 by Epicenter’s University Innovation Fellows, the University Innovation Freshmen program blossomed as part of several White House initiatives during the 5th Annual White House Science Fair. Leaders and Fellows from 10 schools committed to exposing incoming students at their schools to entrepreneurship, design thinking, creativity and innovation as part of freshmen orientation. Today, 30 schools across the United States have committed students to the UIF Program. Members of the initiative believe that early exposure to entrepreneurship, innovation, creativity and design thinking are powerful tools to engage and retain STEM students, responding to a report published by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology indicating that 60% of U.S. freshmen who arrive to college intending to major in STEM change majors to non-STEM disciplines. As University Innovation Fellows, we believe an engaging student experience can be established by connecting freshmen with a community of STEM professionals, and fostering meaningful relationships with both peers and instructors — i.e. students like you.

Need a shining example of a UIF student utilizing the UIF community to engage a diverse population of students on campus? Look no further than Magann Dykema of Michigan Technological University. As a first-year student, Magann quickly realized the need to introduce design thinking to students early in their undergraduate careers. She noticed trends in innovation occurring regularly among upperclassmen, but building innovation seemed a more arduous process for first and second year students. As an orientation leader aiding incoming students in their transition from high school to undergrad, Magann worked with a multitude of departments to bring a UIF initiative focused on design thinking to her campus. In this article, we will illustrate Magann’s process behind launching this initiative at her university and how to measure the success of your own UIF initiative.

Engineering Your Event

The "how" is simple: teamwork makes the dream work. Below is a guide for planning your UIFresh event and learning from it in order to facilitate future improvements to your event model.

Administration

When coming up with events to involve your freshmen, it will take collaboration from many people. Some of the most important and helpful in this process will be your school’s administration and faculty or third-party resources (i.e. a company for funding or hosting). It is important for you to build intimate connections to these people, and this is one of the purposes of the stakeholder meeting. For your stakeholder meeting, be sure to choose a few people who are seen as leaders and benefactors of the freshmen class. In general, these people are your go-to when complications (e.g. building lock-outs, insufficient funding, and event planning mistakes) arise that are out of your and your fellow peers’ hands.

Logistics

The event will involve both the fellows and candidates working together in the planning phase, coming up with a time-table, and executing the plan: setting up tables during the event itself and gathering supplies as necessary. Each member should be able to choose their role in the activity. Coordinate with the orientation staff in advance; the orientation staff training is a great opportunity to test out the activities planned for the UIFresh event.

The coordinator must ensure that the event venue is accessible for setup according to your schedule by figuring out ahead of time if there is a specific process to obtain access, or to determine the times during which the venue will be restricted or closed. This is applicable to other campus facilities and equipments, and will serve to minimize complications on D-day.

Orientation leaders will be responsible for gathering, dispersing, or ushering students to the venue and towards particular activities. If there are multiple locations, communication between the facilitators must be maintained so that each group may cross-reference and adapt in response to observations of students and logistical problems.

Orientation Staff

When planning a UIFresh event, you must consider communicating with the orientation staff to fit the orientation schedule. This is where your skills in communication, compromise, and presenting come in. First off, make sure to pitch the UIFresh initiative to the head of the orientation staff far ahead of time. Have a presentation prepared and be ready to answer expected questions. It would also help to have a letter from a member of the UIF team that has great influence (such as Humera).

Once the orientation team is on board (yay!), the next step is to get the orientation staff up to date. Work with them to find a good day for implementing the event. Then find a good amount of time to meet up with the team and start communicating and bouncing ideas off each other. This is a good time to explain to the orientation staff what UIF and UIFresh entails. Orientation Leaders and the UIF’s are a team at this point, so it is a good idea to ask their opinions and get them to learn the activities that will be done during the event.

Talk amongst the team of UIF’s and Orientation Leader to get them involved in the event, have them help with rounding up and assigning students to teams. Finally, when the event ends, they can help get feedback and debrief students about what they learned and their opinions on the activities.

Assessing Your Impact

Measuring the success of a UIFresh initiative is not a black and white matter. It is difficult to have exact numbers that indicate a successful initiative. Therefore, you must work to combine qualitative and quantitative data to assess the impact you make and to identify improvements you can make for future events.

Engagement

One of the most valuable ways to determine success is to evaluate how the students engage in the events. Do the students seem engaged and happy to be taking part in the activities you are leading? Are they learning the objectives you are trying to teach them? This may be something executed in real time, while you are doing the event with the students. It is important to talk to the students, asking them what they’re doing and seeing if they understand the activity. Make adjustments on the spot if you find that the students could learn better or be more engaged. Being flexible and prepared to change your plans is very i!mportant when leading a UIFresh event. There is no 5-step plan for evaluating engagement, it takes paying attention as a leader to the reaction of the students and subsequently feeling out the results. It will be different for every event, every campus, and every group that does the activity. Getting direct feedback from the participants at the end of the event - discussed more thoroughly in the next section - is a great way to see what changes need to be made for the next group and evaluate the success of the last group.

Feedback

Feedback is another great way to determine success. Listening to students conversation about the event and how they feel afterwards. Another tool that has been utilized often is the I like I wish game. Basically, students write one thing they liked about the event and one thing they wished was different. This allows immediate feedback so adjustments can be made and data can be taken to determine what changes if any need to be made. You may also provide questionaires or surveys to assess the success of your event. Google Forms surveys are a valuable asset for quick and easy statistics!

Support

The final way to determine success of the UIFresh event is by the support gained. Was the campus helpful in coordinating? Were the students helpful? Did you have adequate resources to organize the event? If all of these requirements are met, and your school is supportive of another event, you likely succeeded in organizing a great UIFresh event!