ADULT DEGREE PROGRAM
EMBRACING CHANGE
By manipulating the email survey to be used over the phone, we were able to get the information needed from the staff to help them evaluate the program. We created a shorter survey that was modeled after the initial email survey. We agreed that creating a shorter survey would increase participation. We encouraged members to elaborate on their responses in order to better understand their situation and better communicate their ideas to ADP. This was the biggest change we needed to make to ensure the ADP could be provided with new responses. By choosing to conduct phone interviews instead of a virtual method, we were faced with new challenges that affected how we needed to organize our ideas.
GATHERING INFORMATION
FORMATION OF IDEAS
We did not receive much information after we were given the student contact lists. We did not know their ages, residences, or if they were full-time workers, had families with children or were taking other classes elsewhere. The lack of information almost helped us more in the planning process. We had to assume the best time to call these students. We did not know anything else about these students, so our ideas stemmed from that context. We figured that people would likely answer their phone on breaks or around dinner. However, there are many factors that would alter if people were willing to answer.
Dr. Britt was able to give us our first contact, Carol Fleming. Missy initiated the communication with Carol via email. We set a time to meet to discuss goals and gather information. Carol was able to give us insight into the program and student demographics. Sarah MacDonald gave our group a contact list of forty students and proposed we aim to obtain fifteen responses. Due to the fact that we were given a simple task, we did not need to gather as much information as other groups.
Deanna reached out to the JMU Call Center to see if one of the managers could give us some insight into calling students for feedback. Unfortunately, we were unable to get any additional information from the Call Center. They provided us with a few tips to keep people on the phone and how to introduce the survey, but we already had an idea to implement these strategies. We were not in need of many other resources, so we did not seek them.
Motivation was driven by the fact that we needed to perform well and reach our objectives and goals in order to help the Adult Degree Program. By collecting feedback from students, our group was able to inform the ADP on the information gathered in order for the program to improve based on the responses. We brought together our resources to create the survey and collectively created a goal with Sarah and Carol.
Knowing that this project would help benefit a sector of JMU was also motivation for us. As students of this university, we are encouraged to always lend a helping hand to others. I think being exposed to the JMU culture had an influence over us because we wanted to genuinely assist Carol and Sarah.
MOTIVATION STRATEGIES
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
ORGANIZING
The list of 40 student contacts with their names and phone numbers, which was given to us by Sarah MacDonald, was crucial information. We generated a survey and Carol Fleming finalized our questions. Dr. Britt gave us information on how to use an online board, Trello, to help us organize our plan of action. Our group was given a lot of freedom when contacting the students since the goal was to just receive 15 survey responses from the 40 students.
We also looked for certain information regarding effective call tips. We did not seek any other information other than what Carol and Sarah provided us. We asked Dr. Britt and the class when they thought a good time for us to call the students would be. They gave us useful feedback regarding leaving voicemails, what time to call the students, and how many times we should try and reach each student before removing them from our contact list.