Student Voice for Evaluating What We Do
Guided Pathways Redesign
Guided Pathways calls for redesigning the college experience with the student’s end goals in mind. It asks that we view what we do from a student’s lens.
Collaboration on Student Focus Groups for Evaluation
The principle of listening to students to evaluate what we do was put into place by Guided Pathways teams from East Los Angeles College and El Camino College in collaboration with the Career Ladders Project (CLP). CLP provided technical training to the teams to assess the student experience in learning communities, specifically
Are there successful strategies in learning communities for meeting student needs that may inform a guided pathways framework?
The CLP and college teams pursued a specific collaborative process outlined in the “Career Ladders Project, From Voice to Action: Putting Students at the Center of College Redesign.”1 By learning focus group strategies and applying them, the college guided pathways teams used student voice to validate the efficacy of the learning communities model for advancing guided pathways practices.
Including Students in the Robust Dialogue of Program Review
Program review is another example where both quantitative and qualitative data can help us incorporate the student perspective to evaluate our programs.
The Guided Pathways calls for redesigning the college experience with the student’s end goals in mind. But, typically, program review has focused on quantitative data. However, a Guided Pathways mindset can help move program review beyond compliance toward a focus on student equity and empowerment
- What qualitative data is being collected that reflects direct student experience?
- What indicates that learning has occurred during and through the program? Do students know what they need to learn? Do they feel they have learned it?
- What data best evaluates the efficacy of various supports? How do students feel about the support they have received?
- How can these student experiences help guide the improvement we will undertake?
What are your students saying?
1 Career Ladders Project, From Voice to Action: Putting Students at the Center of College Redesign, Unpacking the Student Experience in Learning Communities Deepens Capacity for Change at Two Colleges, December 2020, https://www.careerladdersproject.org/learning-communities-from-voice-to-action-december-2020/ Links to an external site.