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Background
Understanding Decreasing Participation in Off-Campus Programs
Taking a deep dive into the reasons behind declining engagement with study away programs
purpose
to investigate why participation in off-campus programs is declining
goal
to improve UX research skills and assist the Guarini Institute
team
four UX researchers
deliverables
synthesized insights and suggestions for future directions
timeframe
6 weeks
skills and tools
UX Research
UX Consulting
Background
Dartmouth has long been known for its robust off-campus program portfolio, but recent years have seen a declining number of students participating in these programs even while the number of program locations and offerings has grown. The Guarini Institute sought to understand the declining trend of students studying abroad and where they could be improving their programmatic offerings, and partnered with our team of Design Corps students to research this challenge.
Problem
Student participation in off-campus programs has been steadily declining since 2008. What are the factors that play into such a decline?
Synthesis
Findings
The outcome of this project was not a product, but rather a synthesis of all of the data that we gathered through 14 user interviews and 385 survey responses. We also created a brief list of suggested directions in which the Guarini Institute could go in order to potentially improve student participation rates on off-campus programs.
A word map of the most common responses to our text field questions in our survey illustrates the most common areas of study that concern many of the students who are considering studying off-campus. These areas of study have very few or no off-campus programs available, which indicates that perhaps a lack of relevant options is discouraging students from participating in these opportunities.
Displayed here are the responses when asked how students learned about off-campus programs. As seen above, most students indicated that they heard about these programs from their peers. Although peers may serve as a good initial introduction to these programs, they are not a very reliable source for additional information. This may suggest that other, more official channels of communication that can provide more information to students are not wide-reaching enough, which may be a contributor to decreasing participation.
We asked students to rank the factors that weighted the most in their considerations of whether or not to participate on off-campus programs. The most common responses are highlighted above: academic department, location, and major or minor requirements. From interviews and other survey questions, we learned that many students prefer to go on off-campus programs within their department because they feel as though they would be wasting the term if they took three classes that were not contributing towards their major or minor. This insight gives another clue as to why students have been participating less in off-campus programs: the most common areas of study are not represented enough, and students do not want to go on programs that have nothing to do with their department.
Primary Disincentives to Participating in Off-Campus Programs
From these findings, we identified three themes that played the biggest roles in dissuading students from taking advantage of these opportunities:
1.
Students do not want to miss an entire term of being on campus
Because of Dartmouth’s D-Plan, the schedules of friends often do not align perfectly. Taking a term away from campus to study elsewhere can often mean further misaligning these schedules, which can lead to friends not seeing each other for over six months at a time. This is a major disincentive for students who value a stable social life as one of the primary benefits of college.
2.
Popular majors have overly competitive off-campus study programs
The most popular majors at Dartmouth have the least representation in off-campus programs, making them very competitive and difficult to get into. This can act as a deterrent for students to apply for these programs, as they often see it as a waste of time knowing that the acceptance rate will be very low. Additionally, students who are rejected from these highly selective programs are discouraged from applying to other off-campus opportunities.
3.
Completing major or minor requirements while studying off-campus
In theory, students are open to participating in off-campus programs that do not correspond to their primary area of study. However, due to requirements for numbers of credits for majors and minors, going on off-campus programs that are unrelated to a student’s department and do not contribute to their required classes is often unrealistic.
Suggestions for Improving Current Off-Campus Programs
We also asked students who had already participated in an off-campus program for ways that their experience could have been improved. The following were some of the most common responses.
1.
Flexibility
Overly structured off-campus programs can prevent students from exploring their own interests on their own time. Allowing for more freedom and flexibility would be one way to improve the student experience on these programs.
2.
Social and Cultural Integration
Some students felt that there was too much of an emphasis on interacting with fellow Dartmouth students and not enough of an emphasis on integrating into the culture that they were visiting. More opportunities for students to immerse themselves into their new environment can provide a greater sense of satisfaction to students.
3.
Group Norms
Because off-campus programs typically consist of a small group of students, it can be tough if a student does not get along or fit in with their peers. More intentional building of healthy group dynamics would be one way to ensure that nobody feels left out.
Suggestions for Improving Student Participation in Off-Campus Programs
Based on the interview insights and survey data, we came up with a few potential ways that students could be encouraged to participate in more off-campus opportunities.
1.
More proportionality between popular majors and programs offered
Adding more programs for the most popular majors, such as economics and engineering, would encourage more people to participate, as they would not be as intimidated by a low acceptance rate and could gain necessary course credit.
2.
Allowing students to take at least one major-related course during a Language Study Abroad
Many students expressed interest in participating in immersive language-learning abroad programs, but because they were not pursuing a degree in a language, did not want to spend an entire term without contributing towards their major. Providing the opportunity for students to earn course credit towards their primary area of study while participating in an LSA would encourage more people to try it out, as they would not have to deal with the feeling of “wasting” a term.
3.
Internship-esque experiential programs in which students go abroad to work at companies or in labs or do research while getting Dartmouth course credit (Similar to Northeastern Co-Op)
Having off-campus opportunities even beyond taking classes would be one way to attract more students. Participating in such programs would not involve sacrificing time spent in required classes or not being able to see friends, as these internships would take place during the terms in which the student would not be on campus anyways.
4.
College-facilitated athletic facilities to help athletes remain in shape and competitive
Many athletes we spoke to had additional concerns on top of the ones mentioned above. These primarily had to do with it being difficult to maintain proficiency in their sport without having access to their typical athletic facilities. Having the school provide avenues for athletes to access fitness and training facilities in the off-campus program areas would remove one of the main worries that athletes have about going on these trips.
Process
Process
This process was quite different than the usual design process, as we spent the majority of the project on empathizing and researching.
Empathize
Preliminary Interviews
We conducted casual preliminary interviews with our stakeholders -- students who had studied abroad, were planning on studying abroad, or had decided against studying abroad -- in order to further define our focus and better understand our problem.
Define
Research Questions
After many discussions and initial conversations, we came up with three primary research questions:
1) What are the primary motivations and disincentives for students to study off-campus?
2) What kinds of programs are students interested in? What destinations are most appealing? What topics, questions, and experiences are students most keen to explore through off-campus programs?
3) What other factors need to be addressed in initiating and executing off-campus programs that appeal to students?
Empathize
One-on-One Interviews
Once we had our research questions set out, we were able to create a thorough interview guide that we could use to get at the core of the problem we were investigating. We decided to talk to four users each in a one-on-one, conversational format, as we wanted to encourage transparency in order to gain the most accurate insights. Limiting ourselves to four interviews each allowed us to spend more time with each individual and to understand them on a personal level instead of viewing them as data points to be collected.
Empathize
Branching Qualtrics Survey
At the same time that we were conducting our interviews, we were also collecting responses from our Qualtrics survey. The survey focused on gathering quantitative data, as opposed to the qualitative information that we were gaining from user interviews. Our survey was programmed with branching logic, so that users would see different questions depending on if they were not intending to participate in an off campus program, if they were accepted or planning to participate, or if they had already participated. We received 385 responses to this survey, which gave us a great deal of data to sort through.
Synthesize
Insight Organization
With all of our data from interviews and surveys, we set out to organize our findings and tease out any hidden insights. We did this through a variety of team-wide creativity exercises, such as idea mapping and sticky note storyboarding. These activities enabled us to transform our raw data into the organized findings we discussed above.
Next Steps
Now that we have gathered a variety of user insights and organized them into actionable items, next steps include actually making those ideas a reality. If I could extend this project, I would love to design ideas for off-campus programs that reflect our findings. This could include ideating additional programs for the economics and government departments, or designing a way to allow non-language classes on Language Study Abroad programs while retaining the emphasis on language acquisition.
Takeaways
Takeaways
This project was unlike any other that I have done, as it was focused entirely on the UX research side of things. I did not previously know just how deep working on understanding user experience could go, and I feel that I learned a lot by immersing myself in this purely UX-focused project.
This experience also made clear to me the different but essential values of interviews and surveys. Both are valuable tools to gather user insights, but they must be played to their strengths. Having fewer but more in-depth user interviews is preferable, while it is often more useful to prioritize having a larger number of survey responses, even if they may be somewhat shallower.
Finally, this project made me realize that well-conducted, in-depth UX research can reveal important hidden insights, even for things that seem straightforward. Going into this project, I assumed that I already knew many of the reasons that off-campus program participation was declining. In reality, however, even though I may have had the right intuition, the real reasons stemmed much further and had deeper implications that I expected. Keeping in mind the power of good UX will guide me in my future projects and ensure that I never neglect that side of design.
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