Abstract:

Evaluating the consistency and efficacy of advising programs in higher education is a critical aspect of producing more positive undergraduate student outcomes. This challenge is particularly important for large-scale advising programs, such as Harvard University's Peer Advising Fellows (PAF) program for first-year undergraduates. Despite overwhelming anecdotal evidence of PAFs' ability to make a positive contribution to the first-year experience, feedback mechanisms can still be improved. In response to current questions with the efficacy mid-year advising survey, I set out to identify the purposes and current challenges of the mid-year advising survey through expert interviews with administrators at the Harvard Advising Programs Office (APO) and researchers at the Bok Center for Learning, who also provided written feedback on the current survey tool. Additionally, I conducted focus groups with student leaders of the PAF program and PAFs at large to identify these issues and discuss potential solutions. I note three major findings. First, the PAF survey is created to be a formative tool but PAFs commonly see the survey as an evaluative tool. Second, PAFs want faster feedback mechanisms and more metrics for accountability within the program. Third, not all first-year students can articulate the responsibilities of the PAF clearly. These findings led me to make action-oriented recommendations to improve communication around the survey, hasten feedback delivery time, and facilitate first-years' understanding of the PAF role. Informed by the findings of my research, I worked to create a new modified version of the PAF survey and conducted preliminary testing on the survey's ease of use. Overall, this project's findings will culminate in better understanding of the purpose of soliciting feedback and in the launching of a new survey tool in December 2019.