Title: Institutional effectiveness and accountability: improving educational quality and meeting the expect
1Institutional effectiveness and
accountabilityimproving educational quality and
meeting the expectations of regional accreditors
Horace D. Stearman, Ph.D. Director of
Institutional Effectiveness Rocky Mountain
University of Health Professions
July 31, 2008
2The Key Buzzwords of Higher Education in the
Twenty-First Century Institutional
Effectiveness and Accountability
- What began in the 1980s and 1990s as a call
within the academy for greater concern about
enhancing student learning has become an
increasingly strident demand that greater
accountability be displayed by all institutions
of higher learning. - This swelling tide crested in 2006 with the
publication of the report of the Commission on
the Future of Higher Education, a blue-ribbon
panel charged by U.S. Secretary of Education
Margaret Spellings with creating a comprehensive
national strategy for postsecondary education.
- A critical recommendation of the Spellings Report
is an expectation that colleges and universities
will measure student learning much more precisely
and take action to improve it as well as the
function of all administrative units that play a
supportive role. - Heightened interest in institutional
effectiveness now extends from the federal
government through governors and state officials
and into coordinating boards and boards of
trustees and regents. The belief that colleges
and universities should be more transparent and
accountable to students, parents, employers,
state officials ,and taxpayers is not confined to
any political party and is unlikely to diminish
in the near future.
3Assessment is the Mechanism for Institutional
Effectiveness
- AssessmentWorking Definition
- Assessment is the systematic gathering and
analyzing of information to improve student
learning -
(Dr. Barbara Walvoord,
University of Notre Dame) - AssessmentNot Limited to Academics
- Administrative support unitseveryone at the
institution that is not directly involved in
instructionshould define their mission,
establish goals, and determine how to measure
outcomes associated with those goals so that key
processes that meet the needs and expectations of
students, parents, employers, faculty and other
stakeholders can be improved on a continuous
basis. - The Administrative Unit
Assessment Handbook - University of Central Florida
- AssessmentLinking Process between Planning and
Evaluation -
4Why Do Assessment?
- External drivers
- Regional and program-level accreditation criteria
- Documentation that you have established an
effective assessment process that leads to
continuous improvement - Internal drivers
- Good management
- Quality motivation
- Knowing where you are
- Knowing where you have been
- Knowing what is possible and how to get there
- Standard 1.BPlanning and Effectiveness
(Northwest Commission on Colleges and
Universities) - The institution engages in ongoing planning to
achieve its missions and goals. It also
evaluates how well, and in what ways, it is
accomplishing its mission and goals and uses the
results for broadbased, continuous planning and
evaluation. Through its planning process, the
institution asks questions, seeks answers,
analyzes itself, and revises its goals, policies,
procedures, and resource allocation.
5Levels of Assessment
- Classroom assessment
- Assessment of individual students performance at
the course level by an instructor - Course assessment
- Assessment of how well a course is meeting
student learning outcomes - Program assessment
- Assessment of how well an academic program is
meeting student learning outcomes - Assessment of how well an educational support
unit is meeting its objectives - Institutional assessment
- Assessment of campus-wide issues or programs
6Purposes of Program Assessment
- To improve
- The assessment process should provide feedback to
determine how the program can be improved - To inform
- The assessment process should inform faculty and
other decision-makers of the contribution and
impact of the program - To prove
- The assessment process should encapsulate and
demonstrate what the program is accomplishing to
students, faculty, staff, and other stakeholders - To support
- The assessment process should provide support for
campus decision-making activities such as program
review, strategic planning, and external
accountability activities such as accreditation
7Program Assessment for Continuous Quality
Improvement
- is a formative evaluation process designed to
support program improvement - is continuous
- is focused on improvement
- Student learning
- Student development
- The institution and its people
8Effective Program Assessment Should Answer These
Questions
- What are you trying to accomplish?
- How well are you doing it?
- How, using the answers to the first two
questions, can you improve what you are doing? - What and how does a program contribute to the
development and growth of its students and/or the
support of its customers? - How can student learning be improved?
9The Mechanics of Assessment
- Assessment is a continuous improvement process
- To improve, you need to know where you are today
and where you would like to go - Mission (purpose)
- Vision (where you would like to go)
- Objectives or outcomes (what you need to achieve
in order to get there) - Measures (how well you are currently doing)
- To improve, you need to take action
- Analyze your program or operation to determine
needed changes - Plan the changes
- Take action
10I. Select an Assessment Model
- Popular modelNichols 5-step approach
- A Practitioners Handbook for Institutional
Effectiveness and Student Outcomes Assessment
Implementation. James O. Nichols, Agathon Press,
1995 - Necessary to implement a consistent process
across the institution - Eliminates ambiguity
- Makes planning easier
- Makes training easier
- Standardizes the documentation
- Easier for external evaluators to examine the
documentation - Helps increase the comfort level
- Level of flexibility depends on maturity of the
process
11II. Implement the Assessment Model
- Who is required to conduct assessment? Academic
departments, academic programs, support units - What do you assess?
- Four to seven outcomes that are crucial to the
program or units success - When do you conduct assessment?Annually,
quarterly, monthly, semester basis - How?Portfolios, surveys, institutional data,
standardized tests
12Assessment Plan Template for Support Unit
13Assessment Plan Template for Academic Program
14COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS ASSOCIATED WITH ASSESSMENT
1. Faculty members already evaluate students
through the grades they issue in their classes.
Program assessment is redundant. Faculty
members do evaluate students routinely and assign
grades to reflect individual levels of
accomplishment on tasks, tests, and courses. But
grades reflect a variety of types of learning,
activities, bonus credits, and expectations that
vary from instructor to instructor. Assessment
requires a programs faculty to make a joint
decision about what specific learning should be
evaluated and what knowledge, skills, and
attitudes are indicative of the major learning
goals set for the program. Programmatic
assessment, unlike grades, is designed to
evaluate the level of accomplishment of a program
,not an individual student. 2. Staff members
already know about issues in processes and
procedures that they have with their users.
Assessment does not tell us anything new. Staff
members do know a lot about the issues and
problems that exist in their offices, but they
are often too close to the problems, too invested
in the processes and procedures, or just too busy
to develop solutions to the problems that they
know exist. Assessment forces staff members to
step back, examine issues and problems from a new
perspective, and rethink the activities of the
office. No unit is so perfect that examination
of issues and problems will not allow staff
members to make improvements in how the unit
functions. 3. Assessment should only be used to
demonstrate a programs or offices successes.
Assessment in instructional areas is based on
the improvement of student learning and program
success. In non-instructional offices or units,
it is based on improvement in the efficiency or
quality of services. If the program or unit has
no room for improvement, then assessment is of no
use. It follows that the areas in which
assessment should be concentrated are those in
which the greatest improvements can be made. The
reality is that every program and every office
can get better, and assessment can provide
information to inform decisions about
improvement.
15Institution Vision/Mission
Institutional Goals/Strategies
Education
Research
Organizational Effectiveness
Community Partnerships
Diversity
Major Division Mission
Strategic Plans (Major Divisions)
Sample Goals Increase
faculty size Diversify
funding Improve internal
communication Improve external
relationships
Use of Results
Integrated Planning
Unit Assessments
Expected Outcomes/Measures
Findings Assessment/Reporting
16- H.D. Stearman
- Director of Institutional Effectiveness
- Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions
- (801) 734-6814
- hdstearman_at_rmuohp.edu