Motivate Lab: Student Voices Initiative

Project Status: Monitor/Assess

The Student Voices Initiative centers student-led focus groups to examine students' sense of academic and social belonging at PSU and other higher education institutions and provides recommendations for system-change, with a particular focus on supporting historically marginalized student groups.

Motivate Lab at the University of Virginia is providing us with light-touch support to train the PSU project team to implement the Student Voices Initiative protocol, code and analyze the data, and identify themes to understand salient opportunity structures (e.g., aspects of the college environment that either thwart or enhance their sense of belonging) that can be addressed by incorporating the student perspective.

Accomplished

Trained six undergraduate students to facilitate and co-facilitate student focus groups.
Successfully conducted six student-led focus groups with 35 undergraduate participants.
Trained and supported student facilitators to enter data and code participant responses according to a codebook developed by Motivate Lab, and the project team reviewed and refined the coding.
Initial draft analysis was completed and shared with the Vice Provost for Student Success.
Reviewed and analyzed the Student Experience data regarding belonging for the final report.
Shared our results at the Student Experience Survey presentation.

In Progress

Conducting data analysis and drafting a manuscript for submission to a peer-reviewed journal in AY 24-25.
Will complete an end of project report in Winter 2025.

Project Team

Sponsor: Andrea Garrity
Project Lead: Pronoy Rai
Project Coordinator: Delaney Ybarra, Rianna Piatt
Team: Rowanna Carpenter, Delaney Ybarra, Rianna Piatt, Pronoy Rai, and Andrea Garrity