Right Hi Everybody As Stephanie Risk Said I Am Stephanie Gordon Vice
all right hi everybody
as Stephanie risk said I am Stephanie Gordon vice president for professional
development at naspa i hope that my screen is showing correctly
yes we're good okay great so excited welcome we're really excited to provide
this online briefing today to help you understand
at what the importance and influence of being a reviewer for the annual conference
we have several members of the conference leadership committee with me
i'm going to ask them to start turning on their cameras so that they can introduce themselves
we're gonna walk while they do that we're gonna just tell you a little bit
about this webinar this online briefing it's an important volunteer role to be
about a volunteer reviewer in NASA's professional development process we rely
heavily on those and you all to review programs give your opinions and an
expert feedback on programs so I'm just going to have our additional panelists
introduce themselves will start with a salgo to Jan and ricky and then on to
nancys and so she can tell you a little bit about the conference so Sal would
you like to introduce yourself hello everyone thank you for joining us today
- Alvin omena I serve as the associate vice chancellor in Affairs that were
conversing brunswick have to place that's serving on the conference
committee for 2017 in san antonio
hi everyone I'm jami kenney and i'm from the university of texas at san antonio
and director of communications and administration for student affairs and I
am helping with local arrangements we can't wait to see you very soon
hi everyone my name is Ricky Salazar and i work at the University of Nevada Reno
as a coordinator really excited to be joining this call and looking forward to
all of the great engagement opportunities at naspa can see where
you're muted
to myself hi everyone and seek remand I'm the senior vice president chief
academic and student affairs officer at becker college in western Massachusetts and i have the honor of serving as your conference chair for 2017 and we're
really excited about this briefing to help people get a good sense about the
reviewer process and how to be effective in that obviously it's a very important
part of the conference room so we take this will very very seriously and the
conference committee has been working for quite a while now
each one of the members of the committee has a subcommittee that they're working
with on their own particular areas and they've been doing some great work and
we're moving along it's coming fast and furiously and the program proposal
process is underway and and there is a deadline of September second for that
and and so we did a briefing last week about that process and how to submit a
an effective program and so this is now the second piece to that of how to
review programs and so we're really excited to have you here to learn how to
do this in an effective way and be part of this really important process it's a
great way to volunteer
great thanks the answer will you share just a little bit about the nasty annual
conference and then the guiding principles
sure so um as you know as you've seen from our logo and everything we are the
99 conference
I'm from naspa we do not have the traditional theme
we're using NASA's guiding principles which came from or come from the
strategic plan and that's very well documented on the web page you can go
there anytime and look at the guiding principles and we have slides in a in a
minute or two of where you can find those great on but i'll just to give you
a sense its integrity innovation inclusion and I'm oh I got inquiry
so those guiding principles each one of
and have a list of questions underneath you'll see that on a slide coming up and
so we use those as part of the program proposal process to give people an idea
of things that they can be looking for and I'm questions to ask when you're
thinking about what kind of programs that they want to submit and develop
with their colleagues so we'll do a little bit more about that in a few
minutes
so first we want to actually have Jan talk a little bit about San Antonio so
i'm gonna click a little pictures
so go ahead an you having some of the best pictures of what you're going to
get to experience in san antonio
it's really a vibrant city full of history and culture and we really want
you to think big when you think about programs for this conference
sounds a little Texas doesn't but really the convention center is located in a
very convenient place within the city
meaning that a lot of the city's best experiences are just a short walk away
and we hope that contributes to really great session of evidence while into
these balance the chance to explore san antonio and learning at that's the 2017
great so as Nancy mentioned and we're very excited about being San Antonio to
the in guiding principles as you can see here on the screen integrity innovation inclusion inquiry are really very important to this process so when you think about submitting a program you want to make sure you take a look at the guiding principles and the questions that nancy mentioned and Nancy um shared that we can you could go to the website here and click on program and programs and events and then you get to this section which is the important part of this section really is this area of the questions and I don't know Nancy or any of the other committee members if there's something that you might want to share about any of the questions and thoughts around around these for specifically for our reviewers to think about as we go through the process
I think from my perspective and these aren't the end all be all questions these are just examples that the committee worked on with Stephanie and in the national office to help give people a starting point really when you think about the guiding principles pretty much anything you can come up with for a program is going to fall under one of those guiding principles but as a reviewer
I think it's important to familiarize yourself with the guiding principles and the list of questions that we put out there
I'm so that when you're reading through the program proposals you have that background you know for the process and just to underscore get it may serve as a framework for which two are we evaluate the proposals of proposals are going to be some reviewing each of those questions really does a nice job of sort of summarizing each of those uh uh it's full of guiding principles great thanks so I want to emphasize that today's online briefing is going to be a conversation between me and the for folks on the phone will be jump they'll be jumping in when they have some suggestions they but they've all been reviewers for conferences as well as folks who have submitted programs so that i will suggest lots of possibilities and ways to be a good reviewer and they'll jump in when they have something to share so you can hear from different perspectives of of the for folks on the phone so we're going to go through how to apply to be a review or what it means to be a reviewer and then the selection process and timeline and some things to do and not to do during the the reviewer process so the deadline to be a reviewer is sep tember second we will do an all call to the members of naspa to apply to be a reviewer you'll go to the NASA engagement page whoops which well you you will use your NASA member profile or if you don't have a profile you'll walk in with a guest account and then and ideally become a NASA member in order to be a reviewer so you'll be here yule log into your engagement portal and then you'll select what types of programs you want to review select pre-conference workshops poster sessions general intercessions Casey sponsored or other constituent group sponsored sessions
SI speaks or scholarly paper sessions each one of these programs has a different reviewer process so for example the reviewers for pre-conference workshops are reviewing programs that have questions specifically about either a three-hour workshop for a full day workshop poster sessions have a completely different set of reviewer questions that allow you to think through what a poster session would be and how you would actually give feedback on a poster session the same for our constituent groups if you choose to be a reviewer for the Constituent groups either knowledge communities which have 30 different knowledge communities as well as then constituent groups around our AVP or are enough program you will want to click on that and then select that particular knowledge community or particular constituent group you'll fill out that profile which all also we'll ask you a number of questions about your interest areas your competencies so professional competencies for student affairs and educators you'll want to select one or two of these competencies where you have the most experience so as a reviewer we ideally want you to be able to select the competencies which you feel the most comfortable ideally where you are an expert in an area so for example if you are an expert in leadership programs or leading a division there are two different ways of looking at leadership you want to click on leadership and then we'll know that you have expertise in that particular area so as I mentioned there will be completing this reviewer profile this is kind of what it looks like you'll also be selecting content group and target group areas you'll be clicking off one of the ones that any of the content areas that you may be interested there's about 50 content areas on the profile so you'll want to select up to for the four things that you're really really good at things you have experienced that maybe things that you went to school for so you may they have actually had a lot of courses and assessment evaluation and student affairs research so you'll want to click off assessment evaluation research or there's also target groups which are community college profession professionals graduate students new professionals this is who you are and who you can review for so if you're a graduate preparation student affairs faculty member or if you are a senior level professional someone who's not the vice president for student affairs but someone who's been in the field for a very long time you want to click one of those particular sessions at target group areas also for institutional types you may be interested in reviewing specifically for community colleges or reviewing programs that specifically target small colleges and universities once you click off all the checkboxes you're going to click the Save preferences button once you do that that your information is saved in our database and that's what we use to match you with programs because during the submission process the people who are the coordinating presenter are submitting a program that matches those ideals so we'll be taking up your running a computer program that matches people to the program sessions that have your content areas all saved so we talked a little bit about effective proposals this we talked about this in this submission process but looking at it from the other end and thinking about as a reviewer you're going to be looking at program titles abstract the outline and description and some information about presenters it's important to know that this is a single-blind review process which means that you as the reviewer will know who the presenters are but on the other end when you get when they receive your feedback they will not know who you are as the reviewer but an important aspect of this is making sure that you look at all of this information both the presenter information where you get a short snippet of a bio as well as all the different perspectives how about how well the title describes what the information is what the public abstract looks like so what people will see once this program is accepted and then the program an outline and description is really the most important as a reviewer for you to take a look at go through make sure that it's well-written it's clear it has good content and good justification all of these pieces are are put together a really well-rounded program and so will go through in the next couple of slides what it means to provide clear and good feedback so additionally the effect of proposals also focus on the guiding principles which is what nancy mentioned earlier those questions that are in the on the main page of the National annual conference website are also important because those are really the questions that we would like to have answered for the annual conference making sure that these folks complete all of their materials within the within the program submission process and then also that you're reviewing this that there that the folks who submitted actually have good writing practices that they have multiple perspectives from different institutions different types of people those are some of the things that we value in the reviewer process and through the reviewer process you will be ranking whether something is good or needs needs to be used for improvement
I'm and that actually has a percentage next to that review process that shares that information and helps us calculate the score for a particular program so overall being an effective reviewer means that you have to have some really specific ways to communicate your opinion your expertise around reviewing a program we want to be clear we want to be professional we want you to give actionable information actual actionable reviews and that we want to make sure that you are writing just as as the submissions should be well written in there and and clear in your and your writing especially because we are a scholar practitioners and we want to make sure that we are emulating the things that we want to be so i'm going to go through each one of these and ask our committee members to share some examples talk a little bit about the items that are on the screen and you're going to see the first one is about specificity being clear making sure that your detail oriented and you can see there's a couple of examples here about saying it's not helpful to the to the Comfort Leadership Committee to say I don't like the program it would be really better to say this program needs additional content more experienced additional research to be pertinent to this field and why and then the other aspect of this is at connecting your comments to the content so don't make general statements like the data is not that it just isn't there it would be helpful to say I found the data regarding the student leadership loot student leaders decisions lacking the program will be stronger if there was a specific data on that aspect of the program so that when the reviewer gets that the program submitter gets that information they know exactly why you either didn't like the program where you like the program so i don't know if one of our members has some some additional feedback or thoughts around being clear within that program submission process
I do Stephanie out time in there to be clear with as a reviewer
I think to be a coach so I guess I want all reviewers to think about what lands on the desk of the program proposer that's present team and that they are able to be feel coach through to their next mission one of the best learning experiences i had was serving as submitting a proposal for the conference but also serving as a reviewer because once i changed my lands and I think I became a better presenter
I was more prepared to have submissions for the conference and so the great role to be a reviewer but I want you to view it as the coach great . i think an important aspect of this being clear and all the rest of the size that we go through is taking the time to make sure that you're taking the time and truly reading the proposal fully through and knowing that it's important that you actually type more information into those little boxes that you get they actually can be expanded in order to provide more information within the boxes for the reviewers to see for the program submission submitters to see so making sure you take the time and you are very clear because if your rush through it you'll you're more likely to say I don't like it instead of the specific and clear detailed oriented information when we ask we talked to the folks who are thinking about submitting a program we have them think about the proposal in building blocks to invest time into every element the abstract the description and so on it's not encourage reviewers to do the same as a reviewer i can say that I'm guilty of this and I sit down and try to digest the programs that i'm reviewing all in one city like I'm going to be able to understand it all i need chance to come back and think about the different building blocks that they presented because that's when I can really be specific and clear in my review in that where that program could be improved is in the description in the plan for the the actual session or in the research that back to that so I can't get specific about trying to do it in one sitting that's a great tip I think an additional piece here i mentioned in the early part of the the online briefing that we have specific reviewer questions for each program type and it will be important to say this information needs to be more clear or more specific in a pre-conference workshop when you have three hours to spend and you need to dig into something or this program is a general intercession there's only 50 minutes and you're trying to present you're trying to shoehorn in a lot of information into a 50-minute session maybe it would be best if you use only only use the top portion of your programs submission process for this 50-minute session so those are some things that you could also help to a coach as Jan said coach that information
I'm through with the program submitter all right we're going to move on to being with to being professional in your feedback so this aspect is very very important we have as I mentioned we put a call out to the entire membership to ask them to be applied to be reviewers important aspect of this is that your professional in this process if a you don't finish your program review process or B and don't let us know that you can finish them for some unforeseen unforeseen reason or B if you're unprofessional in your remarks or just write this program stinks or you say something that's not professional we will take you off that list for the reviewer process we really want this to be a good experience for both the people who are reviewing and those who are repeat receiving that feedback so here are three just points about being professional being kind and not making assumptions i won't go through each one of these but i'm wondering if maybe the answer you could share some of your thoughts about about these these comments are or what you have experienced in the profession being professional aspect sure I think all of the characteristics of having an effective you are so important and and this one I think stands out from the perspective of it's the one that hurts the most if it's not done correctly if the review comes through as being unprofessional unkind not clear it that really stinks and and I i hear it every year whether I've been associated with the original or an annual conference or not you see things on social media
I get calls emails from people or I hear people having conversations about the reviews that they got back and among you know how unprofessional they were or lacking really the clarity to help the proposer know what they can do to improve in the future and that's what this is all about so i think the biggest thing i want to say about this is pretend that you and you're the person who wrote that proposal what kind of feedback would be helpful to you put yourself in their shoes and figure out you know am I saying this the most effective way that can help these people in their process and they're going to get your feedback they're going to see what you said they're not going to see who you are but they're going to see what you said and and that's really important in my mind so and then reflect back on the
Association think that the bigger picture later so reflects back on us as a profession as an association so are there this could be the first time interacting with the association and meaningful way and so we don't want their that that experience to be you know changed by the experience to this process i really encourage people who I talked to my conferences who whether its regional annual or even a different organization if they have complaints about the programs that are being offered or they're feeling like they're not matching their descriptions well enough or the target audience wasn't clearly articulated or matched and here's where it all comes down to is the review process and now we're going to get it right a hundred percent of the time probably not and we're reviewing hundreds and hundreds and Stephanie can tell you the number that we generally get for the number of slots that we generally have to fill so we may not get it right a hundred percent of the time but to do the best that we possibly can to ensure that the participants in the conference are getting a quality experience starts with these two processes submitting programs and reviewing the programs i guess that's the guy's a clear well I think a couple of other additions to this aspect is that if you'll notice in the yes is the content or the research or the studies or the example are there is the focus of the yes statements so in the be kind program saying behind example the presenters are to an experience to know anything about this topic flipping that on his head to say this program content could use a senior level perspective to round out the discussion it's really about the content and not about the person it's also important to to think about the positive aspects so some of these examples I gave are specific to the negative aspect of a comfort of a
Content session it's also completely acceptable to say this program is wonderful there's really interesting data and explain why there's interesting data explain why that program or service or content within a scholarly paper submission is really amazing so that the presenter can hear that from a one of their colleagues and peers so positive experience for sment is a good thing too and and finally I would also say that the professional aspect of this is important for your learning as well you're seeing all of this these programs and usually a six to eight programs suppose helps to talk about that a little bit more and in a little bit but you'll receive six to eight programs of really innovative things that are happening on different campuses around the country or internationally all right we're going to move on to actionable so in our actionable slide we were talking a little bit we mentioned a couple of different things but we want people to engage in the learning process and making sure that folks know what they should do with the with the changes an important aspect of this actual piece is that no matter the program even if the program is amazing giving some suggestions on what you might see as a reviewer as being positive or different or something you'd like to see done with the content because what we do when we went to convert leadership committee reviews all the reviews when we accept a program it means that we've accepted based on the reviewers comments so if the reviewer says we want to make sure that there is more information in this authors etc then we expect that the that the persons have made the program's takes that review into consideration and changes or updates their program for that information maybe style you could provide some some more feedback are things that they can think about for actionable items well what I would say is that i think when we do the clear well which is what we covered previously when we do the professional well what you get is a sort of actionable engagement with the process and so we want people to be able to walk away from this process are having learned something or that there is the potential for them to learn something as a result of the feedback we provide them and at the same time we want them to be able to uh be able to go back and and and and have the to do be actionable so that they know what is the baby you too we submit a strengthened proposal for all program and so again so when we provide clear feedback when we provide profession we'll be back then they're able to sort of get beyond that and see what is that they need to do for from learning perspective and more for me to do perspective in terms of how to strengthen their particular proposal so
I just wanted to kind of make those connections back to what we are covered trees unity sorry talking to no one
I'm talking to myself in my office I'm so I know we have a couple of questions will just get through this last slide here and then we'll we have some other we'll look at your questions and then go on to the rest of the presentation so being well written is important as well respecting the coordinator presenters and their colleagues in the time that they took up to submit a program and the fact that we are scholar practitioners we were in academic profession and Ricky have you had experiences of looking at programs are being a reviewer where you have had anything any feedback on on this type of situation yeah i think it's important here to to realize also as a writer know your limitations in your strengths if you for instance you know getting a second opinion on what you're writing will always go a long way in terms of making sure that you're right incorrectly and that that it your point is going to come across the way that you wanted it to come across
I know I'm the guilty of this sometimes i have to i want to write really quick and then I don't have anyone check it and it kinda doesn't go so well so writing that and and making sure that you get another second pair of advised to review that would be great great one of the questions that we received in the chat box was that the there has been reviewers thank you for those of you who are on the
Washington DC in october and they review all the reviews so you may have not like to program and and and rejected it from your process but there is five other people who thought it was a wonderful program and they may actually have accepted it so then the conference leadership committee may may accepted into that process
Nancy wreck mentions that we have a lot of programs we usually get about 1,800
1500 to 1800 programs submitted for the mass panel conference for about five to six hundred slots so it's a very difficult and competitive process so in the review process it's important for you to know as a reviewer that your reviews make a big difference so make sure that you are selecting the right drop down whether you strongly agree agree strongly disagree or disagree with a particular question on the review process make sure that you give your correct final assessment sometimes we see that someone has reviewed and strongly agreed and thought it was a wonderful program but then for some reason their final assessment says reject so make sure to take some time as jan was saying take some time don't sit through the whole process in one night you can log out log back in complete your program reviews and just make sure that you take the time and and make the correct final assessment that process there is also an opportunity within the review process to
501 00:35:03,960 --> 00:35:07,380 for you to talk directly to the conference leadership committee that's something that would not go specifically to the program . coordinating presenters this is a comment that you might say to the program committee that that they would like to see outside of the reviewer comments for example there was a question that was written in about if you find something that's completely inappropriate for the conference content how do you proceed and so you may put in the reviewer comments that go to the presenter this is a topic area that doesn't seem to fit within the NASPA annual conference guiding principles or the learning outcomes don't seem to fit for what the conference would it conferences focus is and then in the in the chat box that goes to the conference
Leadership Committee you could say i don't think this program hasn't any relevance than aspirin annual conference but that was something i would say that goes directly to the conference Leadership Committee and not in the retreat reviewer feedback we just make sure the other piece I want to make sure that the program reviewers know is that we do have corporate partners who often partner with other individuals who submit programs so for example a company may have a wonderful program that does assessment evaluation for campuses and they would like to share information about that particular program we asked corporate partners to partner with a college or university with whom they work on a regular basis and have that person be the presenter the person who works for college or university be the presenter for that program and they are able to be a presenter with them ideally it's not just a corporate presentation selling a product to you but really showing a lot of content or research or data that that program that they sell works or doesn't work on a particular campus ID little works but we ask folks to make sure that they are partnering with a college or university so when you're reviewing a program that maybe from a corporate partner there's always there should always be a university colleague with whom they will present together so it's not just a sales pitch so know that in the review process so that you don't just automatically reject it because there are people from a corporate partner corporation or for-profit entity on there on the program review process so i think at this point I don't know if there's other questions or if there's other thoughts that that our conference a Leadership Committee has on our review process any of you have thoughts or thought questions that may have come up for you while I'm talking well just want to remind folks that even though again you're gonna get a ton of proposals then it may be time consuming and and and tes that to kind of see the learning and to see you as well our to see distant the broadness of what's out there what people are thinking about it just to enjoy that part of the process to learn from your peers and and what people are thinking about in terms of state programs and so don't lose sight of that this enjoy that part of it as well have one thing I'd like to add is that and it doesn't matter what level you're at to be a reviewer because we have programs that are submitted by people in every level of the profession it doesn't matter if you're a new professional if you're a mid-level if you're a senior it doesn't matter because we need people to review programs from all levels we need those perspectives and so I I sometimes hear people say well you know i'm just an RD I couldn't possibly review a program and and that's furthest from the truth you absolutely can review a program review a set of programs and and really offer some valuable feedback you're looking at this from the perspective of a participant and and what you want to get out of this program so absolutely it doesn't matter what level you're at you can be a presenter so if you have people on your staff and they've been looking for a way to volunteer and ass but this is a great way to encourage them and yourselves obviously to volunteer as part of this process and you don't have to come to the NASPA annual conference to actually review programs either so if for some reason you don't have the funds to attend the conference this year or you are coming we still want you to review or submit programs maybe if you get if you are accepted through the submission process you might have some opportunity to come and present there was one more question about clear clarification to the conversation to the conference Leadership Committee there is a box in this in the reviewer process at the bottom that that is labeled information to the conference Leadership Committee and that is the only part of the reviewer comments that are is are not sent to the conference
Leadership Committee all of the rest are sent to the the presenter but the bottom box it is clearly label that says this is information going to the Comfort leadership committee that part is not sent to the route to the presenters any other questions any other thoughts from our conference Leadership Committee oh here we go how many reviewers apply and how many are accepted and we usually have about
1,100 reviewers and we usually end up with about 1200 to 1300 applications but it's uh we at the end when everyone completes the program reviews we usually have about 1,100 reviewers and there are very few people who are not accepted in the reviewer process unless again as I mentioned you have been on professional in the past or if there's other
I'm situations that have a at either you have signed up to be a reviewer in the past and didn't do any of your reviews for any for for the systems in the past so for the most part it's an opportunity that you can can submit and review oftentimes those people who might apply to be a reviewer and have a very very narrow interest of expertise so for example if if you are all are working in technology and in a particular type of it in athletics and student affairs and maybe there might not be that many programs submitted under that area you may only get one or two programs to review instead of the total of eight so while we have a lot of reviewers not everyone gets eight programs if you are in a Content area that's a little bit outside of the norm all right well if you have any further questions after this online briefing or if you watch this video recording and have any other questions you can email our conference chair you can email me or any of them asked the staff and we'll get you connected even to our conference Leadership Committee via their emails as well so feel free to email us and we'll get you the answers that you need but look for that application call for reviewers and we will look forward to reading your reviews back in October