go ahead and get started so thank you again for joining today’s training my name is Eileen and I’m here at Washington State Opportunity Scholarship I work under the awards team which is the department here at wsof that’s responsible for administering the scholarship to the students um again thank you all for all of you for being here today and taking part in our inaugural essay review so in the next 30 minutes I’m gonna go ahead provide a quick overview and training on the guidelines for reviewing the essays again I want to point out that you can use the group chat feature of zoom if you have any questions I won’t be able to answer them on the spot but I’m going to make sure to download them and answer any sort of questions and possibly send an email out to the specific folks who asked them and send out an FAQ as well so please refer to the questions using the zoom group chat all right so Washington’s the Opportunity Scholarship is committed to establishing a pathway for future science technology engineering math and um and healthcare tower that represents the many diverse communities here in Washington see we award each opportunity scholar up to twenty-two thousand five hundred dollars for up to five years in addition to funding we build pathways through student services by way of academic support and career mentorship throughout their college career with you know we provide high potential students with financial aid assistance career guidance student support services to build the skills and competencies needed to compete in the Washington State workforce we find a hundred seventy seven seven health care majors at 65 Washington state colleges and universities before I continue I just want to do a quick sound check and seeing that there are folks who can’t care so I just want to make sure can folks hear me overall and responding the chat again okay so for the person who can’t hear me please adjust your volume and I’m sensing that it might be on that and it looks like folks can hear me just fine thank you guys so you’re rolling and packed as a volunteer today you’ll be taking part in one of the most impactful event we have by selecting our eighth cohort of opportunity scholars this year we have over 46,000 applications and reviewing over 9,000 essays out of the 46,000 I’m sorry 4600 I matter the 4600 students that we will be selecting from there will be 1,850 students that will be awarded for the eighth course as you can see this is a highly competitive application so by being a volunteer you’ll have the privilege of hearing the stories of the promising applicants who will be part of the opportunity scholarship community and in the Washington State economy you’ll be specifically looking at the essay section of our application so it is just a portion of our selection criteria but there are two essays students complete as part of the application so as you read both essays we ask you to keep one important factor in mind as you review the applications and that is equity we receive applications from high school seniors college freshmen and College sophomores who will bring you a diverse set of experiences to the table as you review essays we really encourage you to think about the opportunities to access them and healthcare education in the state think about the urban and inner-city schools as well as the rural schools and also think about the limitations individuals may have because of the personal or family circumstances here is our first essay question um because our mission is to prepare students for careers in stem and health care our first essay asks students to tell us about why they’re interested in to them or health care and what stuff they’ve taken to learn more about the field so you’ll see on the slide on the left hand side is the essay question that we’ve asked the students on the right hand side is a scoring guide which over provides an overview of the rating scale from excellent which is what you will score and it highlights what the essay should inform reviewers as you’re reading them so we really want to see the investment that students have have had in significant significantly exploring their summer healthcare major that they’re interested in evidence of any initial steps they’ve taken to pursue the desired stem our healthcare major and their ability to connect their major to career so again I want to keep in mind that not all opportunities are available across the state and not all the same opportunities are available so the investment can be formal traditional or self-directed so just an example you may read ethics from two students who both who are both interested in coding and computer science but reflect two completely different experiences one talks about the Robotics Club experience and their field trip to the Microsoft campus where they attended a coding camp well the other student might be talking about how they learn coding through YouTube participating in online forums and pretty much teaching themselves how to code if both of these students have taken clear steps to demonstrate their interest in coding both students could equally score on that essay and I just want to note that the scoring guide is also available in the reviewer portal which I’ll go into more detail about so in addition to a strong health care and stem interest we value scholars who demonstrate resiliency initiative and follow-through we know students are more than likely to succeed and spam our health care majors and careers or they exhibit these qualities so again on this slide you’ll see on the left-hand side the second essay question that student answer and on the right-hand side scoring guide that you will be using to guide your scoring the rating scale is again from excellent support and the essay should inform you as a reviewer there about their ability to overcome the challenges ability to navigate and utilize any sort of resources to overcome that challenge and it should inform you the mindset that they have as they go through the obstacles and seeing the challenges as the growth opportunity rather than roadblocks another point I want to raise about equity for both those of these essays you’ll notice that the scoring that doesn’t say anything about grammar brainy mechanics or organization that is not part of our scoring we ask that reviewers score exclusively based on content and this is because GPA is a significant factor in our selection process and that is where we measure the students success and academic in an academic environment the essays are designed to measure something different they’re designed to measure the students commitment to stem and healthcare and the resiliency initiative and followed through these criteria more so than the students spelling and grammar are the ones that really tell us which students are most likely to pursue a career in stem and healthcare successfully so I think this is where the I think the main part of the training is really learning how to navigate the svb portal after today’s training all of you will receive an email on Saturday with the link to the portal review as well as instructions to access the portal so I’m going to walk you through this again if you have questions I can answer them group chat after today’s training I’m gonna go ahead and show you guys the portal just one second you all right I’m going to do another truck can you all see the screen that I have on perfect okay so this is the review or portal um basically again you’ll get the link to the reviewer portal we have instructions over here on the left-hand side you’ll enter the email that you use to log to register as a volunteer so please refer to that if you don’t remember email us and we’ll confirm the email for you as you log in hit continue and you’ll see over here this is the confidentiality agreement that you all will agree to guys you take part in the review make sure to read that and check so just a quick overview each volunteer will be assigned a bundle of 30 applicants which is equivalent to 60 essays so you’ll see here these are all the essays that are assigned to me we have clearly indicated here as what status of each essays are so all of these essays in green that says review complete our essays I’ve already read and scored in the orange over here essays that I still had in progress basically I haven’t submitted the score yet or I haven’t finished reviewing and scoring my name for those that are listed as started and to make it easier for you if you’d like to sort them you can sort them up here by clicking this drop-down to show just the na start in essays and it will filter all of that out for you so let’s go ahead and open one essay actually well on this site so I’ll have all of the resources and reminders over here on the right-hand side of this screen I’ll have the link to the PowerPoint since you folks requested that and then I’ll also have a link to this training if you guys want to refer to that as well go ahead and start a review so basically in order to start click any of those if you haven’t started yet I’m going to point out here the listings so this is right here is the major that the student has selected and following that is the career that the student had typed out what they aren’t wanting to pursue the major is from are selected from our eligible list of majors so as long as they’ve selected any of these these are all the majors we are funding and then as far as the career goes that is PACS that they enter so students you know I have an idea of what they want to do and might be clearly directed to the to the major that they have indicated here on the left hand side yep I’m gonna go ahead and show you guys the score sheet so to access the score sheet you click that plus sign let me do that one more time so you guys can see it so right here is to access the scoring guide so on the left hand side is the essay and the unfolded part is the response that the student had written for this essay so here’s essay 1 and here is essay 2 on the right hand side is the score sheet we did provide a little bit more expensive guidance for the scoring guide between poor good and excellent you’ll notice here when you actually do score there’s a good slash poor or go slash excellent just to to catch the in-between ones that you are still unsure of as you’re reading the guide guidance for poor good and an excellent essay if you feel like it’s in between excellent and good or good and poor feel free to go ahead and select that there so again I just want to know that each we clearly indicated here that right here si two scoring guide is to score si two and then si one scoring guy right here is to score si one so it’s pretty user friendly as far as navigating the two essays here and the score sheet so hopefully this will provide ease for you to kind of toggle through the different screens so as you start reading your essays I just want to make a recommendation that when you are scoring so I haven’t read this essay yet but if you are I want to get a good feel of what the essays look like go ahead and just indicate what score you are wanting to give the student and save draft rather than hitting submit because once you hit submit you won’t be able to go back and change the score but if you just want to get a good feel get a baseline and calibrate your scoring I would recommend to just save draft rather than submit because otherwise once you submit there’s no way that you would be able to go back on um again so with the score guide I just want to point out the grading is based solely on concept try your best to not focus on the grammar or spelling and if there’s any questions that you have as far as you know if you come across the student essay that really just puzzles you you’re more than welcome to email us and we’re more than happy to answer any questions and provide some sort of guidance for you guys and you’ll see here that there is a print option I want to note that we really encourage you guys not to print these essays line is really just a safe paper there’s going to be lots of essays that you’re going to be reviewing and – we really just want to protect the privacy of the students so if possible please use the portal to review all of the essays but if you know for some reason you just your eyes are too stream you are welcome to print them but we do ask that you dispose of the essays and shred them after you have scored them all right so this is the portal as far as toggling between essays you would have to go back and click listings and it’ll take you back to the home page with all of the essays that is assigned to you again each of you will be assigned 30 applicants which is why right here it says 30 total but each applicant has two essays so you will be reviewing a total of sixty essays if you would like to review more than 30 applicants we are happy to provide that for you and you will just let us know you’ve indicated that either in the registration when you signed up if you change your mind and want to review more if you said that you don’t want to review more than 30 you’re more than welcome to email us you’ll have that email available for everyone at the end of this presentation all right go ahead and go back to the presentation so this is just their review summary basically the application just closed on every twenty eighth which was last week and the review period is happening right now you’ll be able to access the essays as soon as March 9th and you’ll have until March 17th which is Sunday to review the essays and then after that it provides us some time to do the rest of our selection and we’ll be able to notify students by April 19th some important notes about the review again each essay h10 these as fine thirty applicant files and an equivalent of sixty essays an email will be sent out to all of you who completed the training and it is a mandatory training so we do ask that everyone completes this and so after today you should be good to meet this requirement when you register there was an option here to attend the work party on March 13th from 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at the coterie work lounge this is optional and this is just a way for us to provide a space and time for everyone for those of you who prefer to have like a designated work time and space to review that I say so we are going to have about four hours for all of you to review that sixty essays that you are assigned if you have registered for this event and that ends our training so thank you again so much for taking the time to take part in this process I will be responding to your individual questions after this training if you have any other questions after today please email us here at awards law opportunity scholarship org thank you all so much again I will respond to the individual emails individually on questions that you have in the chat box and if you have anything else after today please email us the questions thank you so much you’re welcome to log off and enjoy the rest of your day everyone you you you you you you you you you you you you