This is Virtual College Coach training module 3 of 3.
Estimated time to complete is less than 30 minutes (including mastery assignment).

In order to understand trends in student behavior and outcomes, ScholarMatch tracks key data throughout the college application process. Collecting this information is imperative for us to better understand the needs of our students and improve our program to best serve them. Furthermore, we must collect and report this information to CollegePoint to evaluate the initiative’s success – we cannot stress enough how critically important your role is with this.

As a virtual college coach, you will have a much more personal relationship with your students than our staff will, and will be your students’ primary connection to ScholarMatch. For this reason, we rely on our virtual coaches to help us gather information on pivotal college application milestones for students, such as when financial aid forms are submitted, how many colleges a student applied to, and which scholarships they were successful in receiving.

Virtual coaches will track progress with their students in 2 ways:

1. Consistent Interaction Logs Forms (required)
2. Monthly Coach Reports Forms (required)

Interaction Logs Forms

You must complete a brief (less than 1 minute) Interaction Log form after every substantive interaction you have with your students. A substantive interaction is defined as a phone call, video chat, 2-way email exchange, 2-way text exchange, or other 2-way communication method. Voicemail messages or 1-way text messages (such as sending a reminder) do not need to be reported.

You will report the following information in every Interaction Log:

• Date of interaction
• Method of communication
• Topics discussed
• Estimated length of conversation

The purpose of the Interaction Log is not to evaluate coaches based on the frequency of their communication (although we may follow-up with you if we notice you have not submitted one for a long time), but rather to gain a complete picture of what is happening in our program. To that end, you should never feel that it will reflect poorly on you if your student has been unresponsive to your outreach. You will have the opportunity to tell us how often you have attempted to contact them in your monthly coach report.

Monthly Coach Reports Forms

At the end of every month, you will be asked to take 5-10 minutes to complete a brief Coach Report form. In this form, we ask questions about key milestones relevant to the month. For example, in the Fall, we will ask questions about your students’ college lists and when they submitted the FAFSA. In the Spring, questions will center on where students were accepted and what their financial aid packages look like.

It is imperative that you submit these reports in a timely manner, even if you are unsure of the answers (you can always note that you do not yet know an answer). ScholarMatch will follow-up with all coaches who fail to submit their coach reports, and coaches who continually do so may be dismissed from the program.

Tips on Tracking Data Individually

We recommend coaches and students both utilize Google Drive, as it is a secure and user-friendly platform to house documents in and use to track progress. However, you should feel free to track information in whatever way is most convenient and useful for you. Additionally, you can opt to have copies of every Interaction Log and Coach Report emailed to you after submission for future reference.

Effectively tracking your students’ progress will enable you to complete your Interaction Logs and Coach Reports even more easily!

Mastery Check for Understanding

Now that you understand our expectations of tracking milestones, please demonstrate your knowledge by completing a brief mastery assignment here.

*Note that this training is not considered complete until you have submitted this assignment.