FAQs: 2016-17AY Data Collection
Quick Links
We’ve tried to think through any questions you might have about this data collection effort! If you don’t see your question addressed here, please email Lori Kniffin at communityengagement@uncg.edu for assistance.
Data Collection Basics:
Who should report data?
Can I ask my administrative assistant to complete this information on my behalf?
What if I have a lot of different activities to report?
How is the data being collected?
What is the deadline for providing data?
Who is leading the data collection effort?
I’m having trouble with the Qualtrics survey – who can I call for assistance?
Can I save a copy of my survey results for my own records?
What about the Collaboratory?
How will the data I report be used by UNCG?
What “Counts” and What Doesn’t?
What is Community Engagement?
What is Public Service?
Who “counts” as community?
Who “counts” as a partner?
For my activity, I worked with someone else on campus – should I be worried about them redundantly reporting the same activity?
We have an activity that happens between May 30th – June 30th, 2015 – should we report this data?
What kinds of activities should be reported?
I oversee student co-curricular community service activities, events, or programs – should these be reported?
Should I report my service on a community board, media interviews, or invited talks?
Should I report music, theatre, dance, or other kinds of performances? What about public lectures, camps, or other events available to the public?
I jury exhibitions for other institutions – should this be reported?
I host a professional development/continuing education event available to the community – should this be reported?
I supervise student placements – should these be reported?
I teach a project-based course in which my students complete projects in community settings or in collaboration with community organizations – should these be reported?
I’m worried about asking my students to report data directly – will I be able to review it?
Are there any FERPA or HIPPA concerns with student-reported data?
Who should report data?
All UNCG faculty and staff who have community engagement and/or public service activities. These activities may occur as part of your teaching, scholarship, community outreach, or professional programming work roles at UNCG.
Students MAY report data in special cases – please see the question on student placements and course projects below for more details.
Can I ask my administrative assistant to complete this information on my behalf?
We have made it possible for others in your unit to provide information about your community engagement and public service on your behalf. This could include administrative assistants, graduate students, etc. Please keep in mind that it will be difficult for these individuals to complete the survey on your behalf, as there are a number of required fields – and nobody knows your projects better than YOU!
What if I have a lot of different activities to report?
This survey collects data on an activity-by-activity basis. Please complete one survey per activity. Each “activity” describes the key elements – who, what, where, when, and to what end – of a project, course, program, or other type of community-based or –engaged initiative.
How is the data being collected?
Data is collected via an online Qualtrics survey that is available online here.
What is the deadline for providing data?
All data must be submitted by no later than April 1st, 2017.
Who is leading the data collection effort?
Provost Dana Dunn has asked the Institute for Community and Economic Engagement (ICEE) to lead the effort to capture descriptions of activities university-wide that are provided to, for, or with individuals, groups, and organizations outside of UNCG through public service or community engagement efforts.
I’m having trouble with the Qualtrics survey – who can I call for assistance?
Please contact Lori Kniffin or Emily Janke at communityengagement@uncg.edu or (336) 256-2578.
Can I save a copy of my survey results for my own records?
Yes – you will be able to view your responses and save them as a PDF at the end of the survey.
What about the Collaboratory?
Many of you may be familiar with the Community Engagement Collaboratory, a web-based software that tracks partnership and public service activities between universities and communities. In February 2014, ICEE signed a software licensing agreement with TreeTop Commons, the makers of NobleHour.com, to develop the next version of the tool, which is still under development.
How will the data I report be used by UNCG?
Your data matters!! We will make sure that the data provided for this request will be transferred into The Collaboratory when it launches to increase the visibility of your efforts, as well as efficiencies for future reporting initiatives related to public service, outreach, and community engagement partnerships. We hope that this database will create standard definitions of what community engagement and public service are and how it gets measured, and that it will serve as a model for others nationally and internationally.
You will receive email notification to verify and enhance your records once they are transferred into The Collaboratory. When that’s done, we’ll send you an email asking you to create a personal profile and verify and approve the records that are associated with your account. Once you verify and approve records, these will be made publicly available online for others to browse, and will share very clear examples of how UNCG is an institution committed to the communities it serves. (You’ll be able to let us know if you don’t want them shared online)
Your partners’ contact information will be kept private, unless you decide otherwise. There are only two reasons we would EVER contact your partner directly – to let them know that you’ve listed them publicly in The Collaboratory, and to send them a year-end survey. This survey helps us learn important information about UNCG’s partnerships, including feedback on the activity, but also information about what supports are needed moving forward. If you don’t even want us to have this level of contact with your partner, you can let us know NOT to contact your partner when you confirm your information in The Collaboratory.
You’ll be able to use your profile and activity information to your advantage. Functionality will allow you to view and print summaries of any and all activities you share in The Collaboratory. These summaries can be inserted into faculty dossiers for promotion and/or tenure review, or can be shared with various stakeholders to demonstrate your community engagement and public service work.
We’ll also be sure to share your great work with others. Your data will help inform work not only with reporting, assessment, and accreditation, but also with university relations, development/advancement, university strategic planning, professional development planning, and convenings and referrals. By knowing who is doing what, where, and with whom, we’ll be able to connect people and organizations to each other who are doing similar work.
What is Community Engagement?
Community Engagement is a process by which UNCG works with community partners through mutually beneficial partnerships to co-create activities guided by collaborative, reciprocal co–planning and co–implementation. The exchange of expertise and ideas between academic and external community partners leads to co–creation of knowledge and activities that generate benefits for the academic institution, as well as benefits articulated by community partners.
Visit http://communityengagement.uncg.edu/definitions/ for more detailed definitions of community-engaged teaching, community-engaged scholarship, and more!
What is Public Service?
Public Service is an activity through which UNCG provides expertise, resources, and services to or for community individuals, groups, organizations, and the general public. External entities may invite, host, attend, participate, and even benefit from the activity, but the primary responsibility for the design, delivery, and assessment of the activity is shaped by the academic institution. It is important to note that personal volunteerism and professional service/service to the discipline, department, and institution should not be recorded as part of this request.
Who “counts” as community?
Although UNCG is certainly a member of the community, we use community to mean individuals, groups, and organizations external to campus. Our community extends beyond the local, to include regional, state, national, and global partners and may come from a variety of sectors, including but not limited to nonprofits, businesses, civic agencies, and schools.
Who “counts” as a partner?
We know that it can sometimes be difficult to determine who should be listed as a partner on your activity. Consider these guidelines:
- Do not consider academic/disciplinary associations
- Do not consider funding entities here, UNLESS they are involved in the activity beyond providing dollars (e.g., planning, design, implementation, evaluation). You can identify funding entities in a different section of the survey.
- Do not consider patients, teachers, students or other participating individuals or sites as partners.
- Other universities and colleges can be involved, but should not the sole participants or partners in this activity.
For my activity, I worked with someone else on campus – should I be worried about them redundantly reporting the same activity?
It’s always smart to coordinate with your collaborators to make sure the survey only gets filled out one time. But don’t worry, if both you and your collaborator fill out the survey, we’ll be able to reconcile the data once we receive it. Just be sure that you list out your other faculty/staff partner(s) as requested in the survey!
We have an activity that happens between April 1st – June 30th, 2017 – should we report this data?
Yes! We expect that there will be a few summer programs/camps that will take place during the last month of the 2016-17AY. While we are requesting that data be provided prior to April 1st for most activities (we need time to process and analyze all that data!), we will leave the survey open for those few individuals/groups who need to report data on activities that happen in June.
What kinds of activities should be reported?
Keep in mind that the data reported here should ONLY reflect work you conduct/coordinate/represent as part of your professional role with UNCG. While many faculty and staff serve in a number of engagement/service roles as a public citizen (e.g., coaching their child’s soccer team, volunteering at church, or involvement with philanthropic groups), UNCG cannot share those activities as part of its overall impact.
I oversee student co-curricular community service activities, events, or programs – should these be reported?
Yes! This data is critical for UNCG’s application to the President’s Honor Roll. For the purposes of this request, only student co-curricular activities that take place as part of an official UNCG program or initiative should be reported (i.e., students’ personal volunteerism, or volunteerism that is not part of a UNCG program or event, should not be included). Co-curricular service information should be reported by faculty or staff supervisors, advisors, or mentors, as this ensures the veracity of the data.
Should I report my service on a community board, media interviews, or invited talks?
This initiative collects institutionally offered programs, courses, and initiatives. While individual activities connected to serving on community boards, media interviews, invited talks, and expert testimony provide essential contributions to the community, we are not collecting this level of detail at this time (this data may be reported in faculty/staff annual reports). If these roles are connected to one of these institutionally offered programs, they may be identified within the activity record.
Should I report music, theatre, dance, or other kinds of performances? What about public lectures, camps or other events available to the public?
Yes! Rather than identifying each event individually, you may choose to report this data in the aggregate. Examples include, music, theatre, or dance performances, book readings, athletic events, speaker series/public lectures, or other recurring outreach events. For example, the University Performing Arts Series is made up of 15 events that are offered over the course of the year. You may choose to report each performance as a separate activity, or you may choose to complete ONE activity that summarizes the details of the entire Series in aggregate.
I jury exhibitions for other institutions – should this be reported?
No, this information is not being collected as part of this initiative.
I host a professional development/continuing education event available to the community – should this be reported?
Yes, we are looking for activities that provide a service to the public.
I supervise student placements in the community. Should these be reported?
While it is our preference that faculty/staff advisors submit activities regarding their students’ placements, we understand that many faculty/staff supervise tens or even hundreds of student placements. For this reason, ICEE staff have met with each academic unit to discuss how they would prefer to report supervised community-based student placements:
- Faculty/staff report data about student internships/etc. in aggregate. That means that the faculty/staff member overseeing the internship will complete only one activity record (or Qualtrics survey) to describe, very generally, the who, what, where, when, and to what ends of the internship.
- Faculty/staff report on multiple individual student activities. That means that if a faculty member oversees 15 student placements, they can elect to complete 15 separate activities to represent the work of their students (i.e., fill out the Qualtrics survey 15 times).
- Students report data directly (via the Qualtrics survey but with some modifications from the faculty/staff survey) about their student internship/etc. That means that each student will receive an email from a point person within the department asking him/her to complete the Qualtrics survey to describe, very specifically, the who, what, where, when, and to what ends of their internship.
Each unit or department has decided how their data will be reported. If you are unsure of how you should report this information, please contact Lori Kniffin or Emily Janke at communityengagement@uncg.edu or (336) 256-2578.
I teach a project-based course in which my students complete projects in community settings or in collaboration with community organizations – should these be reported?
Yes! We believe that supervised student work in community is important to capture as it is a direct reflection of your teaching role at UNCG. These courses vary in style – in some courses students focus on just one activity/partner, while in other courses students split into teams and work with multiple partners on multiple projects. However, it is up to you to decide how meaningful this data is and how feasible it is to report. You might consider one of the three reporting options outlined in the question above.
I’m worried about asking my students to report data directly – will I be able to review it?
If a faculty/staff member chooses to have students submit activities directly, they will be able to review and approve this data once it is transferred into the Collaboratory later this summer. Student-reported data will be connected to the supervising faculty/staff member’s account in the Collaboratory, where s/he will be able to review, edit, and approve the submission.
Are there any FERPA or HIPPA concerns with student-reported data?
We do not collect any sensitive information from students, but recognize that students may inadvertently report sensitive information about their work with underrepresented communities. Rest assured that the data we collect will be used only for internal reporting purposes until we are able to launch the Collaboratory. Once launched, you will be allowed the chance to review all of your students’ submissions and acknowledge whether you’d like for them to be made public or not.
Still not sure if it counts or not??
As you are completing your record, you may find that you are unable to complete the survey or have questions. Please feel free to call ICEE at any time to discuss your activity, or email Lori Kniffin or Emily Janke at communityengagement@uncg.edu or (336) 256-2578.
