Develop a Participant Tracking System

Develop a Participant Tracking System

Event Overview
Thursday, March 24 6-8 pm

University of Michigan, North Quad room 1255

Community organizations often host events that bring people together in a safe, productive environment. But these organizations need a way to track their participants and to ensure they’re providing the best possible experience to their community.

Join the Community Information Corps and Open.Michigan as we brainstorm how to develop a participant tracking system based on the needs of two area organizations: the Neutral Zone and the Ruth Ellis Center. During this event, participants will:


 * Identify opportunities for how this system can be developed and begin the design process.
 * Brainstorm and design prototypes for the system.
 * Pitch your design to representatives from the Neutral Zone and the Ruth Ellis Center!

Dinner will be served. Please RSVP: http://tinyurl.com/openmichiganrsvp

Learn More: http://cic.si.umich.edu/ | http://www.neutral-zone.org/ | http://www.ruthelliscenter.org/

Agenda
6:10 Opening Remarks and Group formation


 * Introduction to the Community Information Corps
 * What is Open and Why is it Important?
 * Remarks from the Neutral Zone and the Ruth Ellis Center

6:40 Brainstorm: Opportunity and Design

Tips:


 * Consider the need and the constraints
 * How can others use and build on this design?
 * Speak up! Your contributions are valuable.

7:10 Group Share Out (10 minutes each)

7:10-7:25 Let’s Eat!

7:25-7:45 Rapid Prototyping


 * Tips:
 * What does this look like?
 * Who would use it and how would they use it?

7:45 Group Share Out (5 minutes each)

8:00 Wrap Up and Next Steps

Participants

 * Community Information Corps members: Emily Luke (co-facilitator), Drew Gordon, Emily Rinck, Joanna Price, Lettie Malan, Ana C. Rosas
 * Regional community organization representatives: Jessie Fullenkamp, Ruth Ellis Center; Alison Stiner, Stanford; Stephanie Stiles, Ann Arbor Center for Independent Living; Helen Ledegard, Ann Arbor Center for Independent Living; Matt Hampel, Ginsberg Center; Kamaria Campbell, ForeSee Results
 * Open.Michigan representatives: Emily Puckett Rodgers, Alex Askew

Fast Facts: Ruth Ellis Center and Neutral Zone
Ruth Ellis Center

From the Center's website: Founded in 1999, the "Ruth Ellis Center is the only mission specific agency in the entire Midwest dedicated to LGBTQ, (Lesbian, Gay, Bi-atractional, Transgender and Questioning) youth. The Center provides residential and drop-in programs." It provides "Second Stories, our Street Outreach Program and Drop-Center serves youth and young adults ages 14 to 24. The Ruth’s House has two residential programs, serving LGBTQ youth in need of safe and supportive living conditions. The transitional living program serves young adults 16 to 21; Young people ages 12 to 17 are served through a semi-independent living program."

Neutral Zone

From the Zone's website: "The Neutral Zone is a diverse, youth-driven teen center dedicated to promoting personal growth through artistic expression, community leadership and the exchange of ideas." Founded in 1998, the Neutral Zone provides programs in education, literary arts, music, leadership and visual arts. It also houses the Orpheum, a recording studio in the Neutral Zone.

= Results =

Participants in this event broke into two teams. Each team examined and identified the constraints and needs of either the Neutral Zone or the Ruth Ellis Center. Below are notes from each team and next steps:

Ruth Ellis Center
Notes

Background and Constraints

The Ruth Ellis center focuses on a specific subset of our youth community and takes privacy very seriously for both legal and social implications. One the one hand, staff and volunteers take pains to respect the privacy of the community they serve, collecting only volunteered demographic data. A major concern of their staff is to ensure that the accidental disclosure of gendered identity does not happen for their community members.

As a funded organization that provides social services (including housing and counseling and assessment and intake), the Ruth Ellis Center must adhere to a strict protocol of confidentiality for those who use their services. In essence, they collect personal and demographic information in two separate places for two separate needs.

Their current way of tracking participation is by having incoming participants "sign in" on a printed form. Information on this form is not private and not secure and can only address the most basic information needs of the Ruth Ellis Center.The Ruth Ellis Center currently has one central computer for staff use but could possibly obtain a few more for purposes relating to this need.

Need

Staff must provide specific kinds of data to institutions and organizations that fund their work. They are not always able to collect this information based on the paper "sign in" forms. The services that the Ruth Ellis Center provide are also based on the different types of communities they serve and they are not currently able to effecitvely collect the types of data needed to be able to tailor their services to these needs. The Center needs a low cost, low-learning curve solution to this information problem. Tracking participation over time is also important to the Ruth Ellis Center to determine the type of return users and identify any patterns of use over time. In sum, they need to collect more data about their participants in order to appropriately lobby for funding and to effectively allocate resources and services to their community.

The staff and volunteers at the Ruth Ellis Center need something that is easy to maintain and has a low learning curve so that the tracking system is easy to use, manage, and update.

Options Discussed

The team discussed creating a set of ID cards that had a QR code printed on them, however, these cards could be lost, could accidentally identify (disclose) the community members as recicipents of services from the Ruth Ellis Center in inappropriate contexts. Keeping the QR codes within the Center is also problematic as they need to be associated with individuals who participate in their events. Costs associated with obtaining, printing, and managing theses cards may also be prohibitive and volunteers using the system must be trained to create new codes, input data and then manage the cards.

The Center actually needs to collect personal data for its community members on two different levels and for two different needs. It needs to collect detailed records for the intake process that are kept in secure files (currently on paper) as a social services agency but it also needs to collect basic demographic data to support funding decisions and service allocation. If possible, these two records (for one individuals) should be linked by an identifier (a number or pseudonym).

Solution Proposed

The team associated with this problem suggested that a very basic database built on an open source platform (SQL lite) for the Center staff and participants to use. Participants would sign in for events at a computer where they would be able to provide basic information and where, thorugh a simple menu interface, they would also be able to indicate whether they are returning, what services they are using and provide more gender identification details. Because this information will be stored and cleared for the next entry, the Ruth Ellis Center will be able to collect a richer set of data. Participants could log in with their name, pseudonym or identifier that could further protect them from accidental disclosure. The back-end interface would allow staff to add more data to the initial set information provided by the participants as needed. This database does not need to be connected to the internet but could stand alone.

Follow Up

The Community Information Corps will work with Ruth Ellis Center staff to create a scoped project proposal for the development of an SQL lite database. They will present this proposal to a variety of communitiy coding groups including SI coding, the Computer Science and Engineering student groups or as a client project for SI courses.

Neutral Zone
Notes

B ackground and Constraints

The Neutral Zone is a youth-driven community center that provides leadership training and educational opportunities for teens. Participating teens make organizational decisions about how the resources at the Neutral Zone are developed and used. Due to unforseen circumstances, a direct representative of the Neutral Zone could not participate in these conversations. Community Information Corps students working for the Neutral Zone represented their interests and constraints. The Neutral Zone does not have as much concern for privacy as the Ruth Ellis Center does but it does have a need to track participation in order to appropriately allocate funds and resources where it is needed in the organization.

Need

Participants in workshops, training sessions and events at the Neutral Zone need to be tracked in order to determine return rate and usage patterns. Many events at the Neutral Zone are fee-based and must be accounted for. There are variety of programs held at the Neutral Zone and one issue is getting participants to sign in at the right event at the right time. A concern for staff and volunteers is making "signing in" an engaging experience for participants and not something that they will try to avoid. This activity, like other Neutral Zone activities must be centered around a positive teen experience and made to fit the perspective and interests of the teens as well as the needs of the organization.

Options Discussed

Communtiy members and students discussed the need to get teens to understand and appreciate the need to track participation, including them in the development a grant proposal or providing incentives (for example, food rewards) for those who actively engage in the tracking system. As with the Ruth Ellis Center, participants in this event discussed the use of QR codes and ID cards issued to students. However, the issue of privacy was still a concern with ID cards.

Emerging forms of technology were discussed as options to get teens to voluntarily "log in" to the events, including creating iPad apps (that would be facilitator initiated) or using an interactive message board that might be placed at the entrance to the Neutral Zone where teens could provide the necessary data. If many teens use smart phones, this could be another way to submit data.

If teens had some sort of online profile that they could use to promote their involvement with the Neutral Zone (like a badging system) this may also be a way to encourage tracking and participation in the system. Teens could also be matched to donors using this profile system.

Solution Proposed

Members of this group decided that follow up was needed with representatives of the Neutral Zone so that a proper solution could be reached. Participants will follow up with the Neutral Zone about potential solutions and will look to recruit more people in the School of Information community to help with the design of the system. Community Information Corps students working with the Neutral Zone will discuss the tracking system with representatives in the near future.

Follow Up

Like the Ruth Ellis Center, the group discussing the needs of the Neutral Zone also thought they would benefit from the development of an open source light, flexible database and this group discussed interest in approaching more community organizations to determine their participant tracking needs and interests in order to develop a system that could be used by nonprofits and social service organizations across Washtenaw county and in other locations.