This article is part of a longer blog post 5 Ways to Double Enrollment for your K-12 College Summer Program, that helps faculty and other college program staff ensure sustainable enrollment for K-12/college partnership programs.
Whether you’re running a school program in a developing country or a college STEM program for K-12 students this Summer, the application form is your first chance to collect data to help you write that report at the end of the program. Application forms are also an integral part of a good outreach or recruitment plan. But they’re tricky beasts and there is a lot to consider to make them work for your program. Here’s a few things to think about:
Start Early: This seems obvious, but not for the reasons you think. Most of the students who will enroll in your program and beyond are already ‘involved students.’ These students are likely involved in similar programs. If you’re running a K-12 program on your college campus, you need to start program outreach before these students and their parents/guardians make Summer plans. And you have 12-week window, March to May. You can go to mid-May, maybe, but that’s pushing it.
Paper or Online: You need paper forms in addition to a PDF or the Google form you included in an email blast. You need a piece of paper that can be taken to homes and put under a fridge magnet for further discussion. An attractive (read: ‘designed’) application form with the school or organization’s logo makes your program look legit. A single sheet that combines both the application and information about the program works best because one piece of paper is easier to keep track of than two or three. Say a flier or brochure on one side with the application on the other. Legal size paper will give you more room to collect the data we talk about below.
Language: Find out the languages spoken in the homes of your target group. If you’re in a developing country, or even in the US, the ‘official’ language may not be the language that persons actually speak or write. No matter where you are in the world, it’s best to ask people who interact with homes about the best language or languages to use. Or, perhaps you need to send staff to homes to help fill out forms. Either way, find out before you invest in printing forms.
Data Collection: Craft the responses on the application form, carefully, with the program evaluator, the person who will help determine if program goals were met. Responses must be based on program objectives, to ensure that you collect all the needed variables. For example, you can collect demographic information (ethnicity, family structure, household income) and pre-intervention variables like grades in certain subjects before the program, if you’re interested in making a case that your program improves performance.
It’s near impossible to track down participants at the end of a program to fill out forms. What’s worse is that participants have now been ‘influenced’ by the program, so any pre-program data you collect at this stage will be less reliable.
Have an application period. This also signals that your program is legit. Make sure to close applications about 3 to 4 weeks before the beginning of your program so that you can plan for the number of students. You will get most of your applications in the last two weeks of the application period. Note that the deadline is a soft deadline, because folks will bring applications in a day or two after the deadline. Also since you must allow folks to mail them in, a few will trickle in past the close date.
Personal Data: Be sure to collect contact information for parents and guardians. This is the start of your own database for program recruitment. Yes, these students might age out of your program in a year or 2, but (rubbing hands together) they have younger siblings, who may attend the same school or another school where a parent or guardian might have a connection.
In addition, you should collect info about dietary restrictions (kosher, halal, vegetarian) and food allergies. Because you are going to feed them right? And it takes some planning to get a kosher meal delivered at noon, from Monday to Thursday, for six weeks.
Contact Information: Include contact information for program staff in case there is an emergency and parents or guardians need to contact their child. You’ll be in the community center or over at the canal collecting water samples, but someone needs to know how to get in touch with every student enrolled in your program for the duration of the program. It may take a sequence of calls, but it must be possible within a few minutes.
Submitting Forms: There should be more than one way to submit the application. Fax, email, snail mail. And, in person. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve managed an education program and found that parents and guardians wanted to physically hand in the application. They’re not just handing in a form, they’re checking you out. Not like that. More like: Hmmmm, so you’re the person I’ll be leaving my precious child with for six weeks. They want to see you and shake your hand, to connect the form to a person again, cause they may not lay eyes on you again till the closing event of the Summer Program. You did include a closing event in the proposal right?
Confirm that you Received the Application: If you collected emails, you can send out an email confirming that the application was received. In this email you can include the program’s contact information, reiterate the start and end dates and the times. If emails bounce back, mail the confirmation. A mailing allows you to do some house keeping if folks forgot to sign their forms, had a bad email or didn’t complete some sections. You need complete forms for complete data.
I’m sure I missed some. Share your ideas about creating great applications in the comment section below. #heidiholder #redloheducation
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