Regional Assessment Workshops in Buffalo, Toronto, Denver, and Dayton!

StudentVoice is hitting the road again for another round of regional assessment workshops.  Last Friday, October 2nd we kicked off the fall tour in Buffalo, New York for a “homecoming” of sorts at the University at Buffalo, where StudentVoice was launched nine years ago. Approximately 50 professionals from ten regional institutions participated.  

Led by StudentVoice Assessment Consultants, these workshops offer an insider’s view of recent advancements and the strategic partnerships that StudentVoice has fostered. In addition to an overview of how our solutions can enhance your institution’s assessment initiatives, you will benefit from sessions on assessment planning, rubrics as a tool for learning, new “advisor functionality,” and development of performance indicators.

This Friday, October 9th StudentVoice travels north of the border to Toronto for a workshop at the University of Toronto, Mississauga. The fall tour then heads to Metro State College of Denver, on Friday, October 16th and wraps up on Friday, October 30th in Dayton, Ohio at Wright State University.

There is no charge for attending the regional workshops.  Registration for the sessions in Denver and Dayton is still open.  I encourage you to sign up before it’s too late!

Michael

StudentVoice took to the road this past summer for regional workshops on the East Coast with a stop in the New York City region at Hofstra University.

 
John White, PhD, Director of Assessment Programs, talks about the iPod Touch application for mobile data collection.

On Wednesday, July 29, representatives from our assessment and campus relations departments will kick off the first leg of an East Coast tour of Member Campuses.  We anticipate more than 20 colleges and universities will attend these regional events, which include exciting StudentVoice announcements and mini-trainings as well as opportunities to connect with our staff and colleagues from other campuses.

Those in the D.C. area will visit us on our first stop at George Mason University.  Thursday, we’ll head north to Philly where our host is St. Joseph’s University.  The tour wraps up Friday, July 31  in the New York City region at Hofstra University.

StudentVoice assessment consultants will introduce new strategic features, advisor functionality, and benchmarking opportunities. We will also discuss the recent acquisition of the co-curricular management platform CollegiateLink, professional development and training webinars, and strategic partnerships such as the NASPA Assessment and Knowledge Consortium.

I’m looking forward to these workshops and hope to see you there.

Michael

Here at StudentVoice, we take pride in our capacity to network staff from different campuses for the purpose of sharing ideas and methods for assessment. For the past three years, StudentVoice has hosted an annual member meeting. This event has proven to be a valuable opportunity for StudentVoice users to meet their peers from other campuses and interact with our Assessment Consultants. However, the member meeting only occurs once a year and the experience is limited to the people that attend. In an effort to foster more routine communications and collaboration, StudentVoice has incorporated a "forum" feature into our recently updated website.

According to Webopedia (my go to online resource for techy terms) a forum is an online discussion group, in which participants with common interests (i.e. assessment) can exchange open messages. Odds are you have participated in or at least been exposed to a listserv. Think of a forum as a web-based listserv, where you can post an inquiry and your peers can post responses in a threadlike fashion.

StudentVoice has created a number of different forums at www.studentvoice.com to address specific topics of interest. When you get to our home page, click on the Community tab located in the upper left corner of the screen, and then select Forums in the menu revealed below.

I will create an example post so you can see how the process works. Let’s say I’m the Director of Student Support Programs and I’m interested in finding out how other campuses have assessed TRIO programs. Because my inquiry is related to Student Support Programs, I am going to select the Forum titled "Academic Assistance/Advising/Student Support Programs."

Once I am in the forum page, I will click on the “New Topic” button to post my inquiry.

In the Post New Topic screen, I have entered a subject line and message text. Also, at the bottom of the screen where it says “Options,” I checked the box to receive e-mail notifications when responses to my inquiry are posted.

Posting a reply is easy. All you have to do is navigate to my topic in the Academic Assistance/Advising/Student Support Programs forum and then click on the title of the topic.

On the following screen, select “Post Reply.”

Finally, type your reply in the message box and then click on the “Post” button at the bottom. That’s all there is to it!

I hope you found this blog to be helpful. If you have any comments or suggestions, please e-mail me at mweisman@studentvoice.com.