Building Support Systems That Work

Presented below is a comprehensive list of the institution-wide patterns and organizational and administrative policies and practices that were found to have positive influence on the use of student assessment data and a broader impact on the institution in the NCPI Study of colleges and universities. These are intended as suggestions or guidelines for designing a new student assessment system or revising and improving an existing one. They may be used with or without the diagnostic analysis suggested in sections I-III. Additionally, we have provided a summary and link to the three patterns of organizing for student assessment and three conceptual approaches to supporting and promoting student assessment that emerged from our research. Each of these patterns and conceptual approaches provides a unique example for institutions to consider when designing or revising their institution’s student assessment process.

Building Strong Student Assessment Processes: Domain-by-Domain

Institutional Approaches to Student Assessment.
Findings from the NCPI Project 5.2 national survey show that institutions with strong student assessment efforts use the following approaches which should be considered in efforts to improve institutional student assessment processes:

• Institutions should expand their student assessment initiatives by
  1) collecting student assessment information at various points in a student’s academic career (i.e. entry, during, exit, and post-graduation),
  2) collecting a variety of types of student assessment information (i.e. cognitive, affective, and post-college),
  3) using a variety of student assessment instruments (e.g. student-satisfaction, basic-college readiness, alumni satisfaction, etc),
  4) developing their own instruments based on the needs of the institution, and
  5) using a variety of methods of student assessment including non-traditional methods (e.g. portfolios, capstone courses, observations of student performance, interviews, etc.).
  
  
• Increase the number of studies performed, as this is predictive of the use of student assessment information in educational and faculty-related decisions.
  
  
• Understand the link between students’ performance and their interactions with your institution.
  
  
• Distribute results of student assessment to a multitude of constituents.
  

Institution-wide Strategy, Support, and Leadership for Student Assessment
The national survey identified the following areas that are likely to be associated with institutions that have quality student assessment programs and should be considered when evaluating an institution’s student assessment processes:

• Clarify a balance between internal improvement and external accountability as purposes for student assessment.
  
  
• Stress student outcomes in the institutional mission statement. Institutions that do so are more likely to place a greater emphasis on the support and promotion of student assessment.
  
  
• Build supportiveness of faculty and administrators for student assessment.
  
  
• Design productive student assessment planning committees and guidance groups.

Assessment Management Policies and Practices
Nine key policies and practices that emerged from the national survey are seen as important areas of focus for a supportive student assessment effort.

• Offer professional development in the area of student assessment to faculty, administrators, and staff.
  
  
• Develop policies for linking student assessment information to the decision-making process.
  
  
• Involve student affairs professionals in the student assessment process.
  
  
• Incorporate the budgeting process into the student assessment process.
  
  
• Expand access to student assessment information across the institution.
  
  
• Involve students in the student assessment process.
  

Integration with Academic Management and Educational Improvement. The research from our cases studies showed that institutions with strong links between the student assessment processes and campus academic management functions and educational improvement activities were more likely to have well supported and promoted student assessment efforts. The following areas should be considered when improving or designing a student assessment process:

• Balance the emphasis on internal and external purposes for student assessment.
• Integrate the student assessment process into the strategic planning process of the institution.
• Use student assessment data as one of the criteria for institutional evaluation.
• Link the student assessment process to the program review process.
• Establish a performance budgeting process that includes student assessment outcomes.
• Create faculty development opportunities that emphasize the use of student assessment.
• Embed the student assessment process into instructional improvement programs.
• Allow faculty who engage in student assessment the flexibility for new program designs or development.

Uses and Impacts of Student Assessment.

The NCPI Project 5.2 national survey showed that the uses and impacts of student assessment information were least likely to be fully institutionalized. The use of student assessment information for academic decision-making was disappointingly low and most campuses reported not tracking the impacts of student assessment information. Furthermore, our study results show that virtually no institutional monitoring of student assessment impacts is being performed. The following are suggested areas of use for student assessment information for institutions designing or improving their campus student assessment process as well as areas that should be monitored for the impact of student assessment information:

1. Use student assessment data for educational decision-making in the following areas:

• Revising undergraduate mission or goals
• Designing or reorganizing academic programs or goals
• Allocating resources to academic units
• Modifying student assessment plans, policies, or processes
• Revising or modifying general education curriculum
• Creating or modifying student out-of-class learning experiences
• Creating or modifying distance learning programs
• Modifying student academic support services
  

2. Use student assessment information in faculty-related decision-making in the following areas:

• Deciding faculty promotion and tenure
• Deciding faculty salary increases or rewards
• Modifying instructional or teaching methods
  

3. Monitor and track the faculty impacts of the institution’s student assessment process in the following areas:

• Campus discussions of undergraduate education
• Faculty satisfaction
• Faculty interest in teaching
• Changes in instructional or teaching methods

4. Monitor and track the student impacts of the institution’s student assessment process in the following areas:

• Student satisfaction
• Student and retention rates
• Student grade performance
• Student Achievement on external exams (e.g. professional licensure, GRE, LSAT, etc.)
  

5. Monitor and track the external impacts of the institution’s student assessment process in the following areas:

• Student applications or acceptance rates
• Allocation or share of state funding
• Evaluation from regional accreditation agency
• Private fund-raising results
• Success of grant applications
• Communications with external constituents
• Institutional image or reputation

Three Conceptual Approaches to Supporting and Promoting Student Assessment

The analysis of the NCPI Project 5.2 institutional survey in Phase II identified a set of institution-wide support activities and assessment management policies and practices that were related to the use of student assessment information for educational and faculty-related decisions. Close analyses of these activities lead to the identification of three conceptual approaches to supporting and promoting student assessment.

The three conceptual approaches include:
1) A Rational Information-based Approach,
2) An Institutional Strategy Approach, and
3) A Humans Resource or Development Approach. (For a detailed description of each approach, follow the links below.)

The Rational Information-based Approach reflects the extent to which institutions collect and study information on student performance leads to using student assessment data to make academic decisions; the greater the access to these data, the greater the resulting incorporation of them into the academic decision-making process.

The Institutional Strategy Approach reflects the extent to which the institutional strategy drives the student assessment process and is an important determinant of whether the resulting data will be incorporated into academic decision-making.

The Human Resource or Development Approach reflects the extent to which the institution’s student assessment process involves students and staff, supports developing student assessment skills through professional development, and rewards student assessment involvement. Each of these helps to promote the use of student assessment data in academic decision-making.

Three Patterns of Organizing for Student Assessment
The NCPI Project 5.2 Phase III case studies examined the organizational dynamics of seven institutions, three of which provided useful examples of patterns for organizing an institution’s student assessment process. The three institutions and their corresponding patterns of organizing for student assessment cited in these examples, Iowa State University (Directed Decentralization), Wake Forest University (Loosely Coupled), and Northwest Missouri State University (Centrally Guided) offer very different types of organizing for student assessment. (For a detailed description of each of these three patterns of organizing for student assessment, click here.)

The first of these patterns is Directed Decentralization (Iowa State University), which distributes various roles and activities related to student assessment to different levels of the institution allowing the various schools and colleges to control their own student assessment processes while centrally supporting and promoting the institution-wide student assessment effort.

The second pattern of organizing for student assessment is Loosely Coordinated (Wake Forest University), which coordinates and integrates its student assessment activity into a well-developed set of institutional and academic management processes, each serving a different function in promoting institutional change and improvement.

The third and final pattern of organizing for student assessment is Centrally Guided (Northwest Missouri State University), in which student assessment is an integral part of the institution's overriding institutional and academic management philosophy and approach to institutional improvement that is guided from the central administration.