Community Assistant Performance Evaluation Fall 2017

1. Community Assistant Performance Evaluation Fall 2017 Amy Cunningham, Jen Turnbough, and Mark Turnbough

2. Purpose: Program/Service Overview Office Of Residence Life: Community Assistant Performance Evaluation Community Assistants are: • para-professional undergraduate students responsible for the support and development of undergraduate students living in campus residential facilities. • responsible for the daily management of their assigned residence hall wing/floor or apartment block/unit within an apartment community. • serve as peer educators and helpers in order to facilitate the personal and academic growth and development of residence hall/apartment community students. • expected to put students first, working through any issues or challenges that may arise. • provided opportunities to broaden and deepen their experience through service on departmental committees, participating in staff training, staff selection and evaluation and through engagement in various programmatic initiatives. • expected to role model the Residence Life core values in their daily actions, dialogue and behavioral choices. Office of Residence Life

3. Purpose: Program/Service Overview – cont. Office Of Residence Life: Community Assistant Performance Evaluation • Each Fall, Community Assistants, or CAs, participate in a yearly evaluation process which includes feedback from their residents, a Community Assistant self-evaluation, a Graduate Hall Director (supervisor) evaluation and a performance improvement action plan. • Responses from three questions from the Community Assistant performance evaluation were selected to assess three functional areas of the CA position that Community Assistants receive training on during a one week period before the start of the fall semester. Office of Residence Life

4. Goals: • Through the Community Assistant evaluation survey, residents were able to share their perspectives of their Community Assistant experience. • The Community Assistant position is focused on supporting residents, therefore, we chose a resident survey to assess Community Assistant performance, similar to how a standardized test distributed to a student would assess a teacher’s ability to teach content. Office of Residence Life

5. Goals: • We are trying to assess if after a one-week intensive training in August and continual on-the-job training, whether Community Assistants were able to learn how to: • Promote a positive living environment • Develop personal relationships with residents • Support residents with personal issues Office of Residence Life

6. Data Collection: Functional areas of CA position considered for assessment are: • Whether CAs learned how to promote a positive living environment (Q.8) • whether CAs learned how to make an effort to get to know their residents (Q.3) • whether CAs learned how to effectively support residents with personal issues and concerns. (Q.5) • Students were asked to rate each statement based upon a Likert Scale • The lowest rating is “Strongly disagree” • The highest rating is “Strongly Agree” • Other possible ratings include “Agree”, “Neutral”, and “Disagree” • Students were offered the option to add open comments after each statement. Office of Residence Life

7. Sample Materials – Resident CA evaluation Office of Residence Life

8. Sample Materials – Resident CA evaluation Office of Residence Life

9. Sample Materials – Resident CA evaluation Office of Residence Life

10. Sample Materials – Resident CA evaluation Office of Residence Life

11. Sample Materials – Resident CA evaluation Office of Residence Life

12. Participant Overview Community Assistant Resident Data was collected from: • 5 halls and 3 apartment complexes for a total of 8 residential communities. • Response data collected included 323 responses from residence halls and 165 from apartment complexes for a total of 488 responses. • The data was collected between October 2, 2017 and October 20th, 2017. Community Assistant participants whom the data was collected for: • 28 residence hall Community Assistants and 14 apartment Community Assistants for a total of 42 Community Assistants • Participants consisted of 21 CAs who identify as male and 21 CAs that identify as female • Participants included 20 CAs with 1 year or less of experience, 16 CAs with 2 years of experience, and 6 CAs with 3 or more years of experience. Office of Residence Life

13. Learning Domains The Student Affairs Learning Domains used: • Civic Engagement and Community Development (LD6) • Understanding Society and Culture (LD 3) • Intrapersonal Development, Ethics and Values (LD 4) Office of Residence Life

14. Student Learning Outcomes • Practice good citizenship by holding active membership, ownership, and commitment to community groups, programs, Bloomsburg University, etc. (SLO d) • Demonstrate open-mindedness, acceptance, fairness, and respect through participation within diverse groups. (SLO a) • Exhibit caring attitudes and form authentic and mutually rewarding human relationships (SLO g) Office of Residence Life

15. Summary—Objective and Presentation Community Assistants will be able to promote a positive living environment – The data showed that 94% of residents responding felt that the CA promoted a positive living environment (64% Strongly agree and 30% Agree). The data strongly supports the conclusion that CAs effectively learned how to create a positive living environment for their students. Office of Residence Life

16. Office of Residence Life

17. Summary—Objective and Presentation Community Assistants will be able to develop personal relationships with residents – The data shows that 80% of residents responding felt that the CA made an effort to get to know them (52% Strongly agree and 28% Agree). The data supports the conclusion that CAs learned how to develop personal relationships with their residents. Office of Residence Life

18. Office of Residence Life

19. Summary—Objective and Presentation • Community Assistants will be able to support residents with personal issues and concerns – The data shows that 86% of residents responding felt comfortable approaching their CA about personal issues or concerns that they have (56% Strongly agree and 30% Agree). The data supports the conclusion that CAs have learned how to provide support to residents with personal issues and concerns. Office of Residence Life

20. Office of Residence Life

21. Summary—Objective and Presentation Additional Notes: • The data collected via resident Community Assistant evaluations was filtered to provide each Community Assistant with their specific resident’s responses. • Responses collected from residents were also compared with staff self-assessment and supervisors assessment to allow for each staff member to evaluate their individual learning and to develop an action plan for future improvement. Office of Residence Life

22. Supplemental Materials – CA self-evaluation Office of Residence Life

23. Supplemental Materials – Supervisor evaluation of CA Office of Residence Life

24. Supplemental Materials – CA Performance Action Plan Office of Residence Life

25. Recommendations – Changes to Assessment If we were to administer this assessment in the future, we would: • find a way to include Community Assistant self-assessment and supervisor assessment data on these learning outcomes to compare to the resident data. • Expanding assessment to include data from fall and spring semester. • Other interesting data collection may include: • comparing apartment vs. residence halls areas • data tracking over several years • consider including data from all halls and apartments rather than a sample from each resident community type Office of Residence Life

26. Recommendations – Changes to Program Changes to program based on collected data Developing personal relationships: • While all the data showed positive feedback, our staff could benefit from continued training and coaching on ways to develop personal relationships with residents. • We will be continuing to make adjustments to our training program to see if more time can be allocated during August training, January training or one of our 4 continued trainings. Supporting residents with issues and concerns: • We have reviewed our Standard Operating Procedures for the Fall 2018 – Spring 2019 year to ensure that staff are trained to provide an inviting but thorough response to support residents who come to them with personal issues and concerns. Office of Residence Life

27. Sharing the Results Data collected will be shared: • Departmentally to allow for continued discussion and recommendations. • With Community Assistant staff to provide job performance feedback • With the Student Affairs Assessment Team • With the Area Coordinators coordinating staff training for continual CA training improvements • With the Area Coordinators coordinating the Community Assistant performance evaluation process Office of Residence Life

28. Limitations of Assessment Limitations of the study include: • Assessment was limited by the sample size comparative to our total population of on-campus residents and staff. • Data was collected from residents perspective rather than participants (CA). • Chance to win $25 husky gold for completing the survey may have positively or negatively influenced the data. Office of Residence Life Office of Residence Life