Documenting and Improving Institutional Outreach and

Engagement ActivitiesWilliam Knight

James Jones

Delaina Boyd

Lisa Garner

Ball State University

Kate Kaczmarczik

Digital Measures

Overview

• Ball State University• Outreach and Engagement• DMAI at Ball State• The Project• Brief Demonstration• Lessons Learned• Discussion

Ball State University

• State-assisted, residential, research university-high research in east central Indiana

• Approximately 21,000 students• About 950 full-time and 200 part-time faculty

members• 7 colleges, 48 departments and schools, 180

undergraduate and 100 graduate degree programs

• Immersive Learning as a signature program

Outreach and Engagement

• Long history of numerous efforts• Immersive Learning• Building Better Communities• Student Voluntary Services• Faculty activities traditionally reported annually

and separately• Needed a more comprehensive reporting process

to enhance operations, meet strategic plan expectations, support Carnegie Community-Engaged classification

DMAI and Ball State

• Three colleges adopted a few years ago• Other four colleges began using just a few months

ago• All colleges continue to customize to meet their

diverse needs; AI used in different ways for reporting needs (e.g., accreditation, promotion and tenure)

• Leadership responsibility moving from RAE to IE

The Project

• Move faculty reporting from annual separate spreadsheets to ongoing reporting in DMAI

• New screens or integrate within existing screens (e.g., scheduled teaching, presentations, general service consulting)?

• Guiding principle is ease of use for faculty members while meeting reporting needs

The Project: More Details

• Asked if any activities already reported upon (in scheduled teaching, presentations, general service consulting, etc.) involved Immersive Learning, Service Engagement, or Other Outreach and Engagement (provided clickable definitions)

• If yes, additional fields are shown to collect necessary data

The Project: More Details

• Working after Banner implementation and data warehouse implementation to batch load as much data as possible, including faculty demographic and employment data, classes taught, sponsored programs data

The Project: Status As of Spring 2013

• Since these changes to AI were finalized late in the academic year and AI was still quite new to faculty members in several colleges, we provided the option of using AI for reporting or using the previous manual method for 2012-2013. We hope to use AI only now.

Brief Demonstration

Lessons Learned

• It takes a village . . . (key roles)• Communication among all involved• Need top-level support• Listen to the faculty, then listen some more.• DM will do an outstanding job of working with

you, but you need to be very specific about how things work and what you want, and it’s going to take time

Lessons Learned• Pilot testing really helps.• Be flexible. Have a Plan B.• Faculty need to feel the pain first.• Gain the trust of the faculty.

Discussion