Kelly Pappas: Hello everyone! My name is Kelly Pappas and I am the Associate Director at NCCEP and I want to thank everyone who is watching or reading this post. We have a very special guest with us here today. She’s not only the guru of Data and Evaluation for GEAR UP, but also a dear colleague of mine, Chrissy Tillery. Chrissy, thanks for joining today.
Chrissy Tillery: Thank you Kelly.
Kelly: For those people who many not know, tell us about your role with NCCEP.
Chrissy: Sure! I have been at NCCEP, going on 9 years now, and I oversee everything data and evaluation. Those are the things I love and those are things that get me excited. Primarily my work revolves around the GEAR UP College and Career Readiness Evaluation Consortium, which is a multi-grant evaluation now comprised of state and partnership grants. So, I’m really focused on that and other smaller work, but all of it is centered on the impacts of GEAR UP.
Kelly: Awesome. So first off before we get into it, how have you been adjusting to our new environment?
Chrissy: You know, it’s probably been a little bit different for me because I work virtually from my home office anyway. So, it’s been a little bit less of a “moving from the office” transition. But I have been adjusting to how other people are interacting with us and certainly dealing with all the ramifications from the school closings.
Kelly: Yes, absolutely. Are you using Zoom as much as I am now?
Chrissy: I am using Zoom quite a lot, but I was using Zoom already a fair amount. The work that I do with the national constituents and grantees lends itself to a lot of virtual webinars and calls with people all over the county naturally. But certainly, as other people have increased their use, there has been a lot more. But I will say, I don’t do personal hangouts with my friends on Zoom. I’m not there yet. [Laughter]
Kelly: [Laughter] So you do professional Zoom, but not quite personal Zoom yet.
Chrissy: That’s it. Just professional Zoom is all I’m doing. [Laughter]
Kelly: So, let’s get into it a little bit. Since currently schools are closed, I’d imagine that many GEAR UP folks have had a lot of questions. Have people been reaching out to you?
Chrissy: They have. You know, I get a fair amount of traffic anyway. And right now, that traffic is slightly increased probably because of the APR and the deadline next week. So, I would say also that I’ve been trying to reach out more to people as well to make sure they are doing ok.
Kelly: I understand that. They are reaching out a lot about APR right now. What is the most common question they’re asking you?
Chrissy: So, setting aside “Has the Department of Education revised the APR deadline?” which is the question of the hour, and by the way I don’t know. As of right now the deadline is still April 30th. [SINCE THE RECORDING OF THIS VIDEO, THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION HAS EXTENDED THE APR DEADLINE TO MAY 29, 2020.] But setting that aside, I would say the biggest question I get is focused on time. People are now moving into virtual space and providing virtual services. This has always been a question, but now there are more questions about that: “How much time do I account for an email? How much time do I account for a text message? How much time do I account if I put together an asynchronous learning video on financial aid awareness or how students can better reach out to their GEAR UP counselors remotely, and students may or may not watch? How do I capture that time?” I would say that’s been one of the bigger issues I’ve been fielding.
Kelly: I imagine there are a lot of questions from folks in this new environment. So, I have a question. Does any virtual connection between a GEAR UP professional and a student or family qualify as a GEAR UP service?
Chrissy: That’s a great question. I would start with saying the biggest point of clarification is to not convolute virtual remote learning as one. Kids are all now in virtual classes and that really is the same as if they’re in class at school. That is not a GEAR UP service.
Kelly: Ok.
Chrissy: So, then we get into defining what is a GEAR UP service. Those are things you typically do. If I’m a GEAR UP Coordinator, I’m doing my typical day to day work. Some of that involves putting materials together, making videos, and communicating out to students and families. Some of those things get responded to and some don’t. For the work folks are doing around preparing emails, sending emails out, sending videos out, doing an Instagram live, those are just accounting your work. You’re doing your job. You’re accounting for your work. If students and families are following up with you, like they may be following up to a financial aid curriculum with questions or they may be showing up in your virtual tutoring class, and if there is that active engagement from students and/or families it then becomes a service. Same as always. Counseling and advising. Financial aid awareness. Mentoring. You may even take students on virtual college visits.
Kelly: Oh ok.
Chrissy: To give an example of distinguishing between those two, let’s say you have a GEAR UP YouTube channel affiliated with your organization and you upload a virtual campus visit on there for one of your local campuses. Kids may or may not watch that. That would just be documenting your time and is not a service per say. But if you said we’ll do a virtual college tour of this university, and you had kids sign up, login, and do the college virtual tour together or they said they completed it, then you can log that as a college visit service. There’s the distinction.
Kelly: Oh, ok. That makes sense. So, if there’s a “forth” and not a “back”, meaning the student or family doesn’t respond, that is your work you are accounting for. But if there is a back and forth engagement, and some sort of confirmation that the student is engaged, then that can count as a GEAR UP service. Right?
Chrissy: Yes, that’s right. I would say the biggest thing is people really want to capture their time and bucket it somewhere and to one of the service areas. But it isn’t always that. For those times that there isn’t the engagement, then it really is just documenting your work. And that’s ok.
Kelly: Thank you for that clarification. That makes a lot of sense now that you’ve talked through that. What do you think is the number one tip you can provide our community regarding the recording of their time and engagement? What is that tip you can provide us?
Chrissy: I would say two things. One, GEAR UP folks who were in the schools and now working from their homes engaging directly with students, they need to make sure they’re communicating with your Director about this. There should be communication with your Director about how you’re going to capture all these services. Second to that, is that we may now have different functionalities and your data management system may not capture virtual services. So be able to easily collect that data on paper or simple excel spreadsheet and doing that consistently.
Kelly: That makes sense and a huge tip. You just recently did a webinar on this topic, correct?
Chrissy: Yes.
Kelly: Can people still access the webinar, and if so, where?
Chrissy: On Monday afternoon we did a webinar on virtual service recommendations, ways to capture GEAR UP services, and how to document your work. For all folks who registered, a recording was emailed to them along with the power point slide deck, a handout, and some excel spreadsheets. The handout is a really nice four-page handout that essentially summarizes everything in the webinar. Some people like to learn by watching a video. I’m actually not one of those people. [Laughter]
Kelly: Really? So, you like to read.
Chrissy: I want to read. If I don’t know how to do something and have the choice of either watching a video or reading a document, I will read the document. So, we provided both. Whatever type of learner you are, we provided the information.
Kelly: That’s great.
Chrissy: And there are two simple excel spreadsheets. One where you can document your services and one where you can document the work that you did that may not have been responded to. So those documents are available on the Quad. The video recording is available on NCCEP’s YouTube channel. And again, folks who registered, received a copy of everything. And folks can always shoot me an email.
Kelly: Thank you so much Chrissy for joining today and sharing your knowledge and insight.
Chrissy: Yes. Thank you, Kelly.
Kelly: If anyone has any questions, please feel free to reach out to Chrissy at Chrissy_tillery@edpartnerships.org or you can start a discussion on NCCEP’s Quad at quad.edpartnerships.org. Also, check out NCCEP’s website at edpartnerships.org for free online resources that we’ve compiled for your use, like the Career & College Clubs activities we’ve shared. Again, my name is Kelly Pappas, thank you Chrissy, and thank you everyone for joining us today. Stay healthy.