Collecting Data

[Hot_Copper_Frog]

One of the most instrumental changes that 503 has made in recent years is switching over to Office 365 as our official base of internet operations. Each student gets their own FF email, and all information is distributed and collected this way.

365 lets you create a profile, which we use to indicate gender, grade level, previous FIRST experience, etc. We also schedule all of our outreach activities as "events" in the software, and require students to register for events. This enables us to accurately track how many students/mentors attend each event so that we can calculate volunteer hours.

We can also deploy surveys to the entire group very quickly, and drill down in the data much more efficiently. For example, we've created surveys regarding Jr. FLL/FLL/FTC mentoring (which teams, how many times/week and duration of meetings, number of students, awards won), volunteering at FLL/FTC events (we support most FTC events across the state every year, making it hard to keep track otherwise), FIRST impact (how has FIRST changed your life, did it impact your future career goals, where are you attending college, what is your selected major, etc.).

This style of tracking made it very easy for us to adapt to the new FIRST definitions (starting/mentoring/assisting/hosting/running/supporting etc.). Some specific metrics that we consistently track:

• Amount of Jr. FLL/FLL/FTC/FRC teams started each year
• Amount of Jr. FLL/FLL/FTC/FRC teams mentored this year
• Which events are associated with "assisting" teams, number of teams attending
• Amount of teams assisted through correspondence
• Amount of workshops held with amount of teams attending
• Amount of students progressing from one program to the next from teams we mentor (FLL --> FTC, etc.)
• Gender, age, ethnicity, FIRST experience, additional extracurriculars, FIRST impact on incoming/current students
• Scholarships, school of choice, major, and impact that FIRST had on academic choices for graduating seniors
• For events with media coverage, viewership ratings/followers/subscribers/readers of various media outlets to calculate people reached
• Number of years with sponsor, new sponsors added, contribution amounts, students receiving internship/job placement with sponsors, media coverage by sponsors
• Achievements of teams that we have started and/or mentored by season

This isn't a data point, but we always try and send out surveys to people that we work with to get feedback and confirmation that we helped. This includes volunteer coordinators of FIRST events, teams we mentor/assist/start, attendees of events and workshops we run, etc. If you can get first hand confirmation of your actions, this goes a long way towards bolstering the credibility of your numbers.