Implementation Outline

Focus

Ultimately, the audience for my innovation proposal will be my assigned students. However, initially, the intended audience is my immediate supervisor for personal implementation and eventually my departmental unit, who will need to see the value in my innovation proposal for future expansion. My students will use the information to learn essential orientation type information, university policies and procedures, and as a frequently asked questions/24-hour support service. The advising team will use the information to help students become self-directed learners and thereby have more time to support students through their program of choice. 

Proposal

To pilot a personally curated website for students in my online graduate education programs. This website provides students with a self-directed resource that combines relevant departmental websites, university policies, and other important program information that they will need to become successful self-informed learners with full ownership of their academic experience. The problem/issues to be addressed are: 

  1. Help students not feel overwhelmed by building strong advisor-advisee relationships. 
  2. Link students to significant resources that they can use to solve problems while connecting with advisors. 

Implementation Outline

  1. Planning Phase/1 month – 3 month
    1. Review advising experience and students’ common questions.
    2. Identify solutions to improve advisor experience and student information. 
    3. Address Funding – This personally curated project has zero funding needs due to individual creation and maintenance by this individual for the pilot period. 
    4. Research – Identify top student issues/problems/questions to identify rollout priority for the informational resource.
  2. Creation Phase/3 month – 6 month
    1. Obtaining new skills – Creating this personally curated resource will require learning how to create websites and other multimedia sources.
      1. WordPress website creation tools
      2. Video creation and content creation tools
      3. Video/audio editing tools
    2. Implementation Team
      1. Initial creation team of one advisor 
    3. Time Allotments 
      1. The curating advisor will need to dedicate a portion of their work time to content creation.
    4. Identifying stakeholders
      1. Obtain information/resources and build support by communicating with other departments across campus for reliable information and links from first-person departmental sources
      2. Admissions
        1. University Admissions Department
        2. Departmental Admissions Department
        3. Advising Information (orientation email, registration email, start date notices)
      3. Financial aid/Veteran’s Affairs, DARS, and other funding sources
      4. Finance/Cashiering
      5. Departmental sources (program information)
        1. Educational Leadership
        2. Counseling
      6. University source (policies and procedures) 
        1. Records
          1. Dropping/Withdrawing
          2. Grading Information
          3. Medical Withdrawal
        2. Graduate Studies
          1. Academic Appeals
          2. Grade Replacement Form
          3. Change of Major Policy
        3. Graduation/Degree Audit
  3. Review Phase/6 month – 9 month
    1. Review information on growth mindset and learning 
      1. How do we create self-directed learners and apply learning mindset modules to informational resources? 
    2. Research and provide information on adjusting to online learning/graduate program tools
    3. University Resources – Student Tutoring and Retention Services (STARS), Writing Center, Online Tutoring or office hours as available, Disability Resource Center (DRC)
    4. Probation/Suspension tools 
      1. At-risk information
      2. GPA calculation information
      3. Grad Studies Policies
      4. Links to forms and contact tree (links to department contacts)
    5. Readmission issues as students return to their programs after personal issues.
  4. Expansion Phase One/9 months – 12 months
    1. Resource expansion from general university and program information to specific program requirements, need to know, access points, and institutional contacts. The recommended program suggested for the initial pilot is Marriage, Couple, and Family Counseling.
    2. Roll out to continue phase 1 pilot with the Educational Technology program
    3. Final phase 1 pilot with the Applied Digital Learning program 
  5. Expansion Phase Two/12 months – 14 months
    1. Opportunity to expand advising resources to additional online graduate Education programs by inviting departmental advising team to join in phase 2 implementation to additional student cohorts/programs
      1. Professional Development (who, what, mindsets, qualities, adaptive skills, technical skills, when)
      2. Training (modalities/modules)
    2. Opportunity to address mission, goals, and culture of advising unit
      1. Advising Models, Philosophy, and Profession
  6. Review and Improve Phase: 14 months – 16 months 
    1. Revisit existing research on flipped advising and technology-mediated advising for developments and recommendations for additional best practices.
    2. Look for data and metrics on implementations performed to date.
      1. Student satisfaction surveys within the self-directed resource
      2. Advisor satisfaction surveys to advising team members
      3. Supervisor/Departmental error/complete surveys sent out to immediate department chairs and supervisory team.
      4. Send stakeholder surveys to records, financial aid, admissions, and other partnering departments to see if resources have assisted with student inquiries and correct information.
    3. Seek professional review 
      1. Turn to professional journals and other publication sources for professional feedback and feedforward on future/further implementation.
  7. Improvement Phase: 16 months – 18 months
    1. Review delivery and evaluate if continuing to host free general information personally curated resources is working or if additional content should develop and expand with other platforms. Explore options for evolution through existing university programs (i.e., hosting general information as tips resource while utilizing program-specific within Learning Management Software (LMS) or through other existing licenses.
    2. Review interactive feedback options of points or interactive quizzes like Kahoot for student engagement and data collection
  8. Measurement Phase: 18 months – 24 months
    1. Document lessons learned
    2. Seek retention data – evaluate if freeing advisors to develop deeper advising relationships improved outcomes for students in online graduate education programs?
    3. Compare satisfaction surveys from the start of the project to the current.
    4. Discuss future innovations, improvements, and projects

View the implementation outline in its original Google Doc format