Valuable Resources
For Staying On Top of Accreditation!

Using results to inform and improve programs and learning is the foundation of assessment work. But what if the data or our interpretation is faulty?

Sometimes it can feel difficult to get excited about Institutional Effectiveness, not only as an individual but for a campus. Recently in a webinar Mount Saint Mary’s University shared their assessment and program review transformation, where Dr. Michele Starkey, Dr. Laurie Wright Garry, and Dr. Elizabeth Sturgeon reviewed some great stories and strategies for fostering […]

While writing an accreditation report is challenging, many will confess the on-site visit intimidates them even more. It doesn’t have to! Dr. Josephine Welsh has participated at many levels of accreditation, and shared her insights in her webinar. The Visiting Team The most critical aspect of this part of the accreditation process is actually empathy […]

Most assessment, accreditation, and IE directors didn’t set out to be in their roles. Typically the jobs were filled by organized faculty and staff with a true desire to understand and improve their institution. Happily this important field is growing, and is filled with people like YOU. While yes, assessment and accreditation do “check some […]

Fall semester is such an energizing time on campus! It is also a perfect time to begin thinking about your assessment plan for the year. Specifically, what instruments you want to use for measures. It is unfortunately common to gather data, only to discover it does not tell us what we set out to discover […]

While curriculum maps have been around for years, unless you have a pedagogy background you may not have ever created one. They are a useful visual representation of how a program’s learning outcomes are sequenced for students, and also a tool for faculty to make meaningful adjustments as well as streamline assessment. Read on for […]

The Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS) has promoted standards in student affairs, student services, and student development programs for over 20 years.CAS helps you create a culture of assessment while preparing you for regional accreditation. Your institution can leverage CAS to ensure an excellent review by using its program to focus on mission fulfillment, collect constructive data, and enact quality action plans for improvement.

Recently Weave convened a group of accreditors to talk about the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic on accreditation site visits. The five panelists shared their experiences so far, and discussed future planning for virtual and hybrid site-visits.

Decades ago, setting up annual assessment plans to assess student learning outcomes was the focus of much of our work. As we move forward, we recognize the potential value of stepping back from that annual cycle to take a broader look at program effectiveness. It’s the view from 10,000 feet so to speak, and it allows us to take a less iterative look at how programs contribute to the overall mission of the school, as well as how students learn both inside and outside of the classroom.

If there’s anything the last two years have taught us, it is to expect changes and be flexible. But how has this played out in more rigid institutions, like higher education assessment? To help give some insight, we reviewed accrediting sites and interviewed Dr. Tisha Paredes, the Assistant Vice President for Institutional Effectiveness and Assessment at Old Dominion University.

Are you involved in accreditation success for your institution? Wish you could hear from someone who’s been there? We talked with colleagues from three Texas community colleges about their accreditation struggles and success stories, and their challenges, successes, and surprises are useful to anyone working on this project.

With 35 years of data collected, we sought to identify the current trends that both work and need improving by asking the tough questions: Can assessment help us understand how and why, as well as what students learn? How can assessment help us to educate and develop the whole student?