 Good. Okay. Well, we only have 20 minutes and it's exactly 130 on the dot. So I think I will let you introduce yourselves. And as the moderator and representative of the organization, I'll just quickly say welcome everybody. We're glad you could join us today for a presentation from Iowa State colleagues about ACOMP. And if you have questions, please put them in the Q&A. If you have chat comments, feel free to use the chat and I'll turn it over to our presenters. I'm going to mute myself and turn off my video. Great. Thank you, Heidi. And I am going to go really quickly just because I know that we only have 20 minutes and I really do want some feedback from all of you. And for some reason now that I'm sharing the PowerPoint, I can't see anybody anywhere. And I can't even see my clock. So if I, you know, I'm hoping to finish in about 15 minutes. So Kristen or Heidi, if you could just let me know when we reach about the 15-minute mark, then I can kind of speed up to finish up. So my name is Lily Compton and I'm at the graduate college through, with the Center for Communication Excellence. And my colleagues are, there are four of us, but only Kristen is here today. Elena and Sarah are out and they're busy. So our presentation today is about the ACOMP track. Heidi was asking how you pronounce this. Essentially, it's about building capacity early on in the program of study for students. So it stands for Academic Communication Practices and it's a longitudinal professional development that we thought about how can we also make it so that it's official. So we decided to make it a certificate. So since we've completed the whole entire track, we'll be given a professional certificate at the end. We reach out to first year graduate students and they have the option of often in and out, which we will talk about later. But the reason why we decided to do this was because in the USETDA, a lot of our work is focused on the final phase of supporting them when they are trying to publish your thesis or visitation. Well, at that point, we really can't help them with much except the formatting part, the writing and the oral communication and everything else. We decided those were the skills they needed early on in the program. If they had support early in the program, they may have less struggles in the middle and at the end. So that's why we decided, okay, we need to go earlier in the students graduate career program. So how do we set this up? We kind of align the stages of students progression towards their degree and we utilize the graduate college requirements like the POSC and creation and the prelim exam or the exam and the proposals and the final oral exam. Those were the main milestones that the graduate college sets up. So at the CCE, we then map those services to support the graduate students' process towards those milestones. We kind of set this up in three intervention stages. So onboarding is our first one and then the longitudinal tailored communication support, that's the longest stretch because it covers anything from in the middle till the end. And then the third one is the actual preparation support for thesis, dissertation and creative component, which includes kind of like the format review and so forth. The third part was what we covered yesterday in breakout three and if you go to the proceedings, we do have our PowerPoint there with all the links to our information there as well. So before I go into the information about the focus group, I want to take a step back. Before April, we actually sent out a thesis and dissertation survey and academic writing needs to all DOGES faculty and program supports and we said, you know, tell us about your students' writing needs and oral communication needs and professional needs. And we set up a few questions but essentially most of them said at the end when they're submitting their thesis dissertation, yeah, their skills are pretty solid at that point. Of course, in the beginning and in the middle stages, not that many graduate students have those skills. So we said, okay, what can we do to provide those support early on, right? There were other questions in the survey. We also then put the last question to say, are you interested in being a part of a focus group so that we can discuss further about this idea of this ACOM? So we met with two groups and then we decided we discussed all the specific needs and then, you know, we're all the way from orientation for thesis and dissertation stuff to other academic needs. Then we decided to put in some material development and went back to them. We developed a mock-up of the portal and then we went back to them and so they kind of helped us with this pre-pilot stage. In fall 2020, we recruited first-year graduate students from seven programs. They joined us during the time of, you know, the pandemic. So everything had to be online and we had to rethink how we're going to do things. So from these seven programs, we got names and we reached out to them. We decided because it was no longer going to be like a workshop for half a day in person, we decided it was better to split it into two parts. So the first part, we made it a synchronous through Canvas, which is the learning management system. We provided fire recordings about graduate college initial requirements, about planning tools, academic writing support and services. We also provided information about Grammarly Premium, which Iowa State made available for everybody and we kind of showed them why you would use it, how you would use it and how you would need to use it wisely. For the pack, we only said, you know, if you're from certain disciplines that need to write equations, things like that, you would watch this video. Then we went to part two. This is a synchronous event that we delivered through WebEx and during this event, we had three agenda items. The first was to actually provide a live demo of what we call the planning tool and I'll show you what the planning tool looks like later. And then we took questions and answers about what they had after watching the videos and then also moving forward with what the next steps were. The last item is what was most helpful for us. We built in a writing session, you know, maybe like 15 to 30 minutes in the ACOM portal that we developed in-house. Now this writing session, I will talk more later after our demo of quick review of the planning tools. So here's an example of the dissertation planning tool. You'll see on the upper top, it's as early as the second semester, we start guiding them to say, hey, go to look into building your committee and then prep for your form. And then as during the prelim oral exam, these are all the things you need to do. On the bottom part of it, it starts about the graduating semester, right? And you can see on the right side, the boxes actually built backwards, one, two, and three. That's because we built this planning tool based off the graduate college deadline summary. We have two years of deadlines up on our website so students can start plotting their tentative schedule already ahead of, you know, one to two years ahead of schedule. With Masters, you know, they're only here with us for two years. So they need to start planning pretty early. So we encouraged them to use this for their own planning purposes. And then once they have jotted down some ideas, they would then take this tool to their major professor or the advisors and say, hey, this is what I'm thinking about. Can you work with me? You know, I will say this planning tool does not take into consideration of departmental requirements or deadlines, right? This is only purely based off the graduate college deadlines because we don't know what departments want. It changes from department to department. So we keep iterating that this is just based off the graduate college deadline. Here's an example for the thesis or creative component tool. You'll see that there are fewer boxes on the top of the planning tool. The bottom part is about the same. We also prepared road maps, and I know you can't see much, but if you take a look on the left side, that's the dissertation one. The right is the thesis and the creative component. But if you take a look on the left, you'll see three rows of information. The top row is called stages. Those are the milestones, right? And then under the third line, you'll see it in gray, kind of green gray. That's the graduate college deadlines, the requirements, okay? If you look in the center, that's the center for communication excellence. That's our services. There are two rows there. The bottom row where you have boxes. Those are kind of like the documents that students are needing to prepare. So statement of research interests, other program requirements, maybe sometimes they have a proposal, dissertation drafts, and many scripts, and so forth. Above that, you'll see a lot of icons. Those are the services that we map based on what they need to be producing at those different stages in your program. And the bottom is what the icons mean. If you get our PowerPoint and click on the link, you'll see the better version of it, the bigger version of it. Next, I want to go back and talk about the writing task that we had during the last agenda item in the synchronous event, right? So here's the process of what we do. During the synchronous event at the end of it, we tell the students they're going to write and submit a writing sample based on two prompts. And they're very simple prompts, very basic. After they submit the prompts that our consultant who's trained for writing academic writing skills kind of holistically evaluates and provides feedback using a rubric that we develop based off research. Once that is done, it then passes on to the CCE reviewer that kind of puts in recommendations and reviews the feedback and recommendations, then releases that to the students and the program contact or advisor. And then the last stage is when the student and program contact receives the email saying, oh, your feedback is ready, they take a look at it, they schedule a meeting, and then they say, you know, based on the recommendation, it looks like your academic skills are pretty solid. So, yeah, you can opt up if you wish. But if the program contact or advisor says, you know, I agree with some of these things that they're saying, you could work on these academic writing skills, maybe you should opt in, right? And so they discuss it, and then they opt in or out at that point. The next few slides, I'm going to go really quickly so that you can see what the plural looks like, and then we'll take some time for questions and questions and feedback. So on the top part here, this is what the students see. They set up an account using your ISU ID number, they go in, then they see the prompt. So they see prompt one, and they can also select the drop down menu and see prompt two. Once they read both prompts, they click on the blue button there that says, let's start writing. And they write a sample based off the prompt they selected, right? Once that's done, it goes to the consultant, and then the consultant goes in, this is what the consultant sees, view unassigned documents. The consultant clicks there and sees a series of documents. So on the left here, it's what the consultant's dashboard would look like. I created three separate samples because we already finished our pilot, so there were no more samples in there. So imagine all three samples are three different students, right? And Kristen, who is our consultant, she goes in and she selects the first writing sample and she clicks on add comments, right? So on the right is what she sees when she clicks on my sample. In the document text on the left side would be what I submitted as my sample. When she highlights any part of my text, it pops out the category drop down on the right side. And those are pre-populated with categories for local and global writing needs, and we divided them into the main areas of writing academic needs. So she annotates the comments and then she can select from two categories. One is writing strengths, what the students are good at, and then also the areas that they are needing to improve on. So we really developed that into a drop down list so that if in the future we have more than just one consultant, they are consistent in their feedback. This is where at the top of the consultant's page, the consultant can also click on the rubric and it expands further into the information. Once the feedback is done, she clicks on ready for review, it goes to the reviewer, then the reviewer logs in and sees document ready for review, clicks on that, and here this is the, these two images are actually from one page, I just split them, okay? So on the left you'll see the document which is the student's text and then all the comments that were selected. On the right, the strengths that were indicated and then the comments and then the recommendations of what services the CCE can provide and so we encourage the students to come see us. Once that's done, the student and program contacts sees the same information, this is the one page that they would see. For the program contact, if they go in, they can see all of the students that have participated and so for example here, there's only one student from this department, Elizabeth, and if the program contact clicks on the right button, they can see the A contract and here's where they can opt in or out. But where it says view documents and there are two documents, if the person goes in, they can see each of the documents being submitted with the comments that came from our consultant and our reviewer. So these are all just kind of sample screenshots. This is the flyer that we try to send out to our students and show them that is a journey. Right from the beginning, the moment you step on campus, you know, you are bombarded with information and things to do, you might feel overwhelmed, here's what you can do, you know, if you're interested, come see us, sign up for our A contract, we start with the onboarding. Once they are in there, they do the first phase, if they decide they want to continue with us, then we can continue to provide that longitudinal support and communication. If not, they typically just wait until at the end when they are working on their thesis and dissertation, then they come and see us. So I'm going to end here, two minutes over my client time. I will invite questions and feedback. So are you able, you're able to see the questions, Lily, do you want to just answer it yourself? There's a question in the Q&A. Yes, I see her say this question and she says, how many students did we typically have at one time? Kristen asked, well, I'll let Kristen answer this. We actually only had one pilot so far and that was fall 2020. And then we had to pause it because our IT person actually left and so we couldn't develop the portal. So it's on pause, but this fall, we are trying to recruit a second cohort to come in. So I don't know if Kristen, if you can remember how many students we had in the first pilot, if you can answer that. Is Kristen here? I don't see her. She's dropped off the sharing video and audio, so I don't know. I want to say, Robson, I think it was about 30 to 40 students from the first pilot. However, we didn't have all of them participate in the writing sample point. They did the first phase which was the asynchronous and they got the information through the Canvas part. But what we discovered was the reason they didn't come to us was because they thought they were coursework only students in a different program. So when they saw that, oh, this is longitudinal, it was going to end with a thesis of dissertation, it was not relevant to us. So then they didn't show up for the synchronous. This semester, we're really hoping to have a live in-person session so that it would be easier to have everything all done in one morning or morning and afternoon. So we don't know yet how many people we're going to recruit, but fingers crossed, we will get more. I'm sure you will because it seems like a great program. I've got a question. Are some of these resources on your website? I would love to look at some of what you've created for marketing as well as some of the step-by-steps. I mean, this is just phenomenal. Obviously, so much work has gone into preparing to provide this to your students. Yes. It's all from our website, the CCE website. We actually just released one tab specifically for the ACOM, and then they kind of interact with the other pages, but where ACOM is kind of like where ACOM is concerned, we've actually now opened up a new tab there so that students can just go there and start. But right from right now, the ACOM is trying to get them into the on-boarding process. The longitudinal is what the CCE does in terms of like one-on-one consultations for oral communication and written communication and digital communication and all the workshops that we have. And then obviously it feeds into the phase three, which is the thesis and dissertation and creative component. Lily, this is amazing. We are at 150, so I know we probably need to bring it to a close. I don't see that there's another question that has popped into the Q&A, but I know people can reach out to you if they want more information or have questions at another time. Yep. Thank you, Heidi. Okay, thank you. And I know the University of Iowa will definitely be reaching out to you. Awesome. We would love to collaborate. Thank you, everyone. Thank you for attending.