ADULT DEGREE PROGRAM
ANALYSIS
Our efforts met the initial goals. We set small goals that needed to be accomplished before we could achieve the overall goal. We had to receive a certain number of responses each week in order to remain on track with our timeline. Since we only had three full weeks to complete the project, we needed to set up a way to stay organized and make sure we could gather enough data by the end of the month.
Once we completed the survey and got it approved by Carol, we began calling the students. By the end of the three weeks, we were able to gather the ADP’s goal of fifteen responses. These responses were paired with the initial survey responses, which supplied enough feedback for the ADP staff.
One large challenge that set our group back was the lack of information provided by our partner. We were not given any demographics about the students, which made it difficult to find the best time to call them.
Another challenge we face was that the response rate was out of our hands. The students were the ones who would determine if we met our goals. We called the students up to three times, tracking when we called them throughout the week. We kept notes to keep group members updated with the calls and responses. This challenge affected our group the most because it was an aspect that was out of our hands. Sarah MacDonald was kind enough to send the students an email that told them they would be receiving calls from the office, but I am not sure this actually helped us get responses.
The fact that the project was straight forward was a strength for the group. We simply had to gather personal feedback from the students and their experiences studying at JMU. This was a simple task. We did not have to go out and gather information in a focus group, partner to put on an event or create outbound plans.
We were lucky to be able to split up the work into three equal parts. This made us all responsible for getting five responses each in order to hit our overall goal of 15 responses. This was an internal strength because no one could fall subject to social loafing. We all had to pull our weight in order to accomplish the goal.
Another strength we had was the size of our group. Having just a group of three made communication and delegation simpler. We did not have too many communication issues and we were able to update our Trello boards and message each other with any progress we made on the project.
Our group experienced both single and double-loop learning. Single-loop learning came from ADP itself. The program only sent out an email form of a survey and expected more responses than it received. ADP then reached out to us for help. Our job incorporated double-loop learning. We had to find a way to generate more responses, other than using an email survey. So, our group created a new survey that could be used over the phone. We further experienced double-loop learning when calling these students. We created a call log and entered any call information to keep track of our progress and who else needed to be called. After about a week, we noticed we needed to change the time we called students in order to boost our chances of getting responses. After some deliberation, we concluded that our group needed to adjust our tactics. Due to our changes and dedication, we successfully received our goal of fifteen responses before the end of October.