Background:

Students at the University of Minnesota are expected to participate in meaningful learning and development experiences both inside and outside the classroom. Student employment is one avenue for students to obtain real world experiences outside their academic environment. These experiences contribute to personal growth and development, lead to the acquisition of new skill sets, and promote positive campus engagement activities.

The Office for Student Affairs (OSA) has identified seven major outcomes which may result from structured "outside the classroom" experiences. These Student Learning Development Outcomes are: Responsibility/Accountability, Independence/Interdependence, Goal Orientation, Self-Awareness, Resilience, Appreciation of Differences, and Tolerance of Ambiguity.

To find out whether or not the students' experiences corresponded to the mapped outcomes, Student Unions and Activities (SUA) office, a unit of OSA, has incorporated measurement of the Student Learning Development Outcomes into the student employment system of the Unions.

Action:

During the first year of assessing the Student Learning Development Outcomes, OMS and SUA developed a Pre-, Mid- and Post-assessments for first-year students working at SUA measuring their self-reported growth. In addition to traditional surveys, we facilitated focus groups of student workers and their supervisors in various job categories. Our focus was to gain insight about the entire development process as well as the difficulties and challenges students experienced. Based on the information gathered changes were made to the evaluation process that enabled SUA to improve the program:

• During the second year, supervisors' evaluations of students were implemented to obtain a more encompassing view of student development.
• The Pre- Assessment was omitted because data collected during focus groups showed that initial student self-ratings were inflated. This omission also decreased the workload for supervisors and student staff, thus increasing overall participation.
• By student and supervisor request, the scale changed on the Year One Assessment to provide more clarity on the extent to which a student developed.
• A Second Year open-ended assessment was implemented.
• An Exit Survey was implemented to assess the satisfaction second year participants had with the program as well as the overall effectiveness of the program.

Results:

After the initial collection of data, it became evident that there were discrepancies between students' and supervisors' evaluations of student development and that the supervisors were not very aware of how the students were learning and improving. To address this issue, SUA decreased the number of students that were assigned to each supervisor and designated a middle-tier worker to get feedback from the students prior to evaluation. Additionally, SUA instituted a mid-year meeting between the student and his/her supervisor to discuss the student's development and the process to develop the desired skill sets. Supervisors also helped students to set goals for the year and worked to provide students with enough responsibility to achieve those goals. This "coaching" philosophy not only helped the students succeed, but provided supervisors constructive strategies for managing student development and performance.

As a result of the evaluations and the changes made to the program, SUA was able to ensure that the program was producing the outcomes outlined. Because the development outcomes were mapped to job responsibilities, students were able to realize and communicate skill development outside of the classroom.