Observations and Conclusions

We were surprised at the “high” percentage of students who said they have a career and educational goal (over 90%).

· Students who believe they have a goal may be reluctant to use educational/career planning resources because they think they are “done”.

· What will motivate students to participate in LIFEMAP?

· What is our expectation for students, faculty or staff to participate in LIFMAP?

· Distinction in the survey between “do you have a goal?”, “is it written down?”, “do you have options to your plan?” were intended to show varying levels of “goal planning”. The response reflect that fewer students report “deeper” level of goal planning. For example, 90% have a goal, but 44% have written it down.

· What percentage of the students surveyed had completed SLS1122? While we can’t get this information from this data, we could find out what percentage of currently enrolled Valencia students have completed SLS1122. (This sample of students was representative in other ways.)

· Focus groups with students would provide an opportunity into deeper understanding of what students mean by having a plan, how they use that plan, etc.

We were surprised at the “low” percentage of students who said they talked with faculty or advisors about their career and educational plans (58% “seldom” or “never”)

Would like to develop strategies so that more students see faculty and advisors as a resource they would seek.
A goal for the “full implementation of LIFEMAP” would be to reduce the “never” responses to a very low number.
Increase percentages of “Often” and “Sometimes” to 90%.
Consider mechanisms to require advising before registration (for all students? for certain students?)
A faculty/staff LIFEMAP survey would help assess the level of understanding and support of LIFEMAP among those groups.

A “high” percentage of students reported talking with family (84% “Often” and “Sometimes”) and with friends (84% “Often” and “Sometimes”) about their career and educational plans.

· How to increase the effectiveness of these discussions to support goal achievement?

We were surprised at the “low” percentage of students who said they used Valencia resources such as Cyber Advisor, Career Center.

· May be due to a “disconnect” for students between going to the Career Center and recognizing on the survey the name of the office where they were. We know from Career Center usage reports that thousands of students visit the campus Career Centers annually.

· Would like to develop strategies so more students see these resources are critical to their success in implementing and completing their goals. (Again, would like to reduce the “never” responses to a very low number.)

· Would like to see how many “hits” we get on the LIFEMAP web pages and which ones get heavier use to see which are more useful to students.

· The introduction of the Atlas system will be a tremendous opportunity to focus students’ attention on LIFEMAP (career and educational planning) and the tools we have at Valencia to support their goals. We are planning to create a specific “MY LIFEMAP” tab within the Atlas portal that will house the electronic tools that support learning outcomes and educational/career planning.

· Would like to increase the percentage of students who use the Atlas portal, the Valencia web site, and all of its accompanying “tools” for learning.

The survey results support earlier evidence from student focus groups: that students are gathering a lot of information (60% report taking an assessment on careers; 64% report doing research on jobs that fit different majors; 65% have done research on different careers); but are not synthesizing the information into a meaningful plan that they can execute.

Some of us were surprised at the percentage of students who said they had not heard of LIFEMAP (47%) (given the visibility of the signage on all campuses) while others were impressed with the percentage of students who had heard of LIFEMAP (53%) (given the relatively short time it has been fully implemented).

· Signage should be updated this year and the process of developing the LIFEMAP signage will be more collaborative.

· Even students who see the LIFEMAP messages were not able to explain what they meant. In a class assignment, many students were not able to articulate what “Get directions” meant beyond the literal translation.

· The qualitative responses indicated that students who knew LIFEMAP (20%), were able to accurately describe what it was. This shows that the message is understood in general, but needs to be expanded to more students.

· Tim Lehmann reported that discussion with students in his classes indicate that they see the LifeMap signs but don’t really know what it is. They need a more in depth understanding through more explicit messages.