Vision community conversation: first thoughtexchange wraps up

The first community conversation on UFV’s values and mission came to a roaring close on Wed, Nov 14. In its final week, we saw a groundswell in participation, and the thoughtexchange closed with 648 participants, 916 thoughts, and 20,207 stars given out.

Initially, participation by faculty lagged that of students and staff; however, there was a spike over the long weekend in UFV faculty contributions. Total participation from faculty clocked in at 110, in line with the number of staff at 121 participants. Student participation also jumped in the last few days, ending at 279 participants. Alumni (27), community members (8) and other affiliations (23) rounded out the participant demographics.

An experiment in thought-sharing

When President Joanne MacLean launched the visioning process at the end of October, it marked the first time UFV has used the online platform thoughtexchange as a forum for gathering ideas and input from the UFV community. A B.C.-based company, thoughtexchange has powered stakeholder consultations for numerous post-secondary institutions, including BCIT and Camosun College. UFV’s first experiment with this online tool produced a level of engagement that was equal to or surpassed that of recent thoughtexchange conversations hosted by other institutions, a result that will encourage further use of thoughtexchanges as we finalize our mission and values, and as we start the conversation on vision in the new year.

Sharing the results

Over the next couple of weeks, the Visioning working group will be busy collating the thoughtexchange data and identifying major themes. The results of that work will be published on the UFV Vision Hub, as well as presented to the Visioning steering committee. Working with President Joanne MacLean, the steering committee will deliberate on UFV’s statement of mission and values.

Watch your email for updates or visit the Vision Hub to get the latest news on visioning. In the meantime, here are the overall top-ranked thoughts for each question:

Q1: What do you think are UFV’s most important values (our core beliefs)?

Q2: What are your thoughts about our existing values and mission? (ufv.ca/mission)

Q3: How would you describe UFV’s mission (our core purpose) in fewer than 10 words?