Leveraging Social Networks for Student Engagement: Scaling a Successful Hillel Pilot Program
Peer network pilot projects should be designed for scale from the outset, with cost considerations, measurement, and evaluation processes built in, a case study from the Monitor Institute and the Jim Joseph Foundation finds. Leveraging Social Networks for Student Engagement: Scaling a Successful Hillel Pilot Program (19 pages, PDF) shares lessons learned from the experience of Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life as it prepared to scale up its Senior Jewish Educators and Campus Entrepreneurs Initiative, in which student-interns engage their peers in conversation and activities and work with the program's Jewish educators to stimulate deeper learning and growth. The report notes that one challenge for any distributed network of organizations is managing program design so that programs are both standardized (to deliver comparable quality of outcomes) and flexible (to fit the local context). Recommendations for scaling include starting with a well-defined core program model and moving to a lower engagement methodology over time.
