Research Work Group Meetings
Historical Summary:
Summer 2007
Data Access Meetings - Soon after the recent hiring of a Director of Institutional Research at CC and a Resesarch Analyst and Research Consultant at MJC, Shawna met with all three college researchers on many occassions during the late summer 07 and early fall 07 terms to introduce Datatel and the Crystal Reporting tools and address data access issues.
Fall 2007
Data Request Form Creation - Late Summer 07 the Research Work Group met together on several occassions to create a uniform Data Request Form that could be used at all three locations and would serve mulitple purposes. The draft form was presented to adiminstration for feedback and it is being tested for its usefullness now. Changes will be addressed as it gets utilized.
Spring 2008
In early Spring 08, all four researchers met with the Chancellor to discuss his vision of how the YCCD Research should function.
This meeting resulted in the following five action items:
1. The identification of a data warehouse system
2. The identification of a user-friendly self service query system
3. The compilation of a district wide data element dictionary
4. The identification of common research questions
5. The design of common research reports.
Key points touched on during this meeting that will address the above action items were:
- The Research Work Group is an informal group consisting of the research staff throughout the District.
- Research will be cooridnated at the District level. It was further clarified that research will be coordinated by Shawna, not run by her. This coordination will occur through regularly held meetings where agendas and task lists can be shared. Research is driven by consistant definitions of common data and these elements should be routinely provided throughout the District. Anticipate as a group what people will need from Research and provide it ahead of time making data available to as many people as possible. (Fact Book)
- Whenever possible, data and reports should be similar between the colleges and central services. Ex: Dennis and George are working on a common report to present FTES trends to the Board.
- Any plan with benchmarks needs to be tracked - SLO for example.
- Changes must be able to be identified in Program Review or Student Learning Outcomes or the Process isn't a good one.
In order to follow through with these action items in a timely manner the Research Work Group will initially meet every two weeks in the Spring 2008 term, beginning on Jan 31, 2008. We will alternate locations between MJC and CC and every other meeting will be a phone conference to limit the amount each of us has to drive each month. The meeting schedule will be reevaluated for Summer 08 and readjusted accordingly.
These meetings will be documented in writing and shared on this site as well as with District Council, District Administrators Council and Chancellor's Cabinet.