Our interpretation of the major issues and concerns that resulted in this recommendation:

1. The Committee recommends that the University develop and implement an institutional outcomes assessment plan and a program review schedule for all sectors.

   This issue concerns the need for a larger university-level assessment plan which is served by coordinated and consistent college-level program review at all levels. Additionally, at the program review level, we need to account for university-wide and/or intercollege programs, such as the general education program, First Year Seminar (and other CeTL instructional programs), and co- curricular programs, including the range of programs under student affairs. The institutional assessment plan should focus on those values identified in the ISU Mission Statement and the ISU Strategic Plan as central to the culture of the University, and should emphasize student learning as our primary core value from which all of our other values follow. This allows us to position assessment at all levels as the improvement of student learning, which further permits us to draw linkages both between the levels and across a given level, as well as with planning and budgeting.

   Lack of a clear institutional plan has constrained our efforts 1) to communicate effectively what we are doing well in terms of program review, 2) to identify much less address what we need to do, and 3) how to bring this information to bear on planning and budgeting processes effectively and on a timely basis. As such, the single most crucial issue in terms of this part of the recommendation concerns clear and established channels of communication that reflect and are driven by institutional, college, department, and program needs.

2. The Committee recommends that the University 2) identify and maintain effective support mechanisms in institutional research and financial accounting.

   The lack of an umbrella institutional assessment plan which provides shared points of reference and associated channels of communication has hampered ISU’s ability to identify and put in place both IR and financial accounting resources for our assessment and planning efforts at both the institutional and programmatic levels. The dysfunction of the OIR detailed in Recommendation #2 and the lack of a clearly-articulated financial plan linked to our larger strategic plan detailed in Recommendation #1 have made it nearly impossible to provide even basic support mechanisms for assessment and program review. We need 1) to identify what IR resources are necessary to support assessment and program review as well as other University planning needs; we further need 2) to ensure that adequate resources are in place to both develop and maintain those resources. We also must identify 3) what financial accounting resources are necessary to support planning and programmatic assessment and review efforts, and 4) ensure that these resources, largely information, are provided on a timely and consistent basis.

   A related, even more fundamental matter relative to this issue concerns the data systems and computing deficiencies detailed in Recommendation #3. Many, if not most, of the four needs identified in the paragraph above depend in large part on ISU’s ability to make substantive and immediate progress on the issues detailed in Recommendation #3. The lack of both assessment-driven and financial accounting data and computing resources underlies the larger issues of conceptualization and communication which need to be addressed in the part of Recommendation #5.

3. The Committee recommends that the University 3) review for revision, assuring appropriate linkages among them, the University’s planning, institutional assessment, outcomes assessment, program review, and budgeting processes, with explicit assignment of specific responsibility for accountability and oversight of these processes.

   We need to first articulate, then review and revise where necessary 1) university-level planning procedures, 2) institutional assessment procedures, 3) outcomes assessment procedures at both institutional and programmatic levels, 4) program review procedures at college and institutional levels, and 5) the budgeting processes allied with/resultant from all of the above. Most importantly, we need to review these 5 procedural areas to ensure that they are linked synergistically in ways that both reflect and further our University’s Strategic Plan and are procedural elements that operate in concert, rather than elements of university functions that operate discretely with little overt linkage and overall planning. Important questions to ask, then, include the following: 1) How do each of these procedural areas relate to the University’s Strategic Plan in terms of both needed function and planning? 2) How should each of these procedural areas be structured to meet those functional and planning needs? 3) How do each of these procedural areas relate to each other, in terms of overlap and shared concerns and resources? 4) How can linkages between these areas reflect those relationships?

   Furthermore, we need to articulate and make explicit the who or which unit(s) is responsible for assigned tasks in each of these procedural areas and where accountability resides for oversight of 1) each procedural area and 2) the various facets within each area. We need, in short, to articulate an organizational chart which reflects HOW we are approaching these processes and details WHERE responsibility and accountability reside for each step/area.

How this recommendation links to other recommendations?

Recommendation #5 is closely linked to three recommendations — recommendation 1, institutional planning; recommendation 2, Institutional Research, and recommendation 3, integrated database management systems. Recommendation 5 is also directly or indirectly linked in varying degrees to four other recommendations — recommendation 4, state workload adjustment policy; recommendation 6, SBOE planning and assessment; recommendation 7, university organizational/management structure and oversight, and recommendation 8, faculty workload policy.

The extensive comments in the NWCCU Comprehensive Report referring to Recommendation 5 and related standards is stark testimony to the range and depth of linkages between Recommendation 5 and the seven other recommendations listed here. Furthermore, the linkage Recommendation 5 shares with Recommendation 1 is enormous in its implications — taken together, the issues articulated in recommendations 1 and 5 touch on every other recommendation in the report. In much the same way that item number 2 in Recommendation 5 is dependent on the integration of ISU’s database management systems (Recommendation 3), all of the other recommendations in the comprehensive report are dependent to greater or lesser degrees on or grow from the issues detailed in recommendations 1 and 5.

What has already been done to address this Recommendation:

To address a range of aspects of the issues listed under items 1,2, and 3 of Recommendation 5, we have reconstituted the Faculty Coordinator for Assessment and Program Review position in the restructured Office of Institutional Research. The coordinator is responsible for tracking the status of assessment and program review efforts, including monitoring deadlines and maintaining a catalog of assessment coordinators, plans, reports, and reviews, and identifying and instituting lines of communication and feedback between assessment coordinators, deans and associate deans, the Office of Institutional Research, the Center for Teaching and Learning, the Council for Teaching and Learning, and other relevant University units. Broadly speaking, the assessment coordinator serves as an institutional advocate for assessment in general, and as a resource on procedures and requirements aimed at developing a culture at ISU of sound assessment effectively integrated with teaching and learning within and across programs. The coordinator works to 1) integrate unit, program, and course assessment with unit and faculty development efforts and 2) develop and offer a range of assessment training and development opportunities for assessment coordinators, faculty, and administrators. To this end, the following tasks have been accomplished:

1. Lines of communication and reporting deadlines within each of the colleges at ISU (with the momentary exception of the College of Engineering) have been established both within each college and with the Assessment Office in OIR. The articulation of these various relationships either forms concrete assessment loops at the program-college-university level or clarifies already- existing procedures.
2. The OIR Assessment Handbook has been revised and replaced with 2 separate handbooks — Program-based Review and Assessment and Course-based Review and Assessment. Copies of both handbooks have been and continue to be widely distributed on campus to serve as a fundamental resource for reflecting how assessment enables the improvement of student learning based on outcomes assessment and how such assessment enables sound program review.
3. Campus-wide assessment/faculty development workshop with Peggy Maki, former AAHE Director of Assessment. Participants received Maki's new book Assessing for Learning, and included assessment coordinators and/or program/department chairs from across campus, as well as general faculty. (Workshop took place February 25, 2005.)
4. Dean’s Council has been constituted as the campus-wide Assessment Coordinating Council, meeting once per semester or as needed more frequently.

What activities are currently underway?

1. College-level informational meetings centered on communicating focus on assessment as the improvement of student learning and on feedback from departmental assessment coordinators.
2. Communicate with all assessment coordinators and report to their relevant deans concerning status of current assessment plans, reports, and program reviews to establish college-by-college baselines, including merging specialized accreditation reports/review efforts with larger campus-wide program assessment and review efforts, and revising the current schedule for completion of assessment plans, assessment reports, and program reviews and establish timely schedules for each program within the respective colleges.
3. College-level assessment workshops for assessment coordinators as followup to Maki workshop, focused on program-based assessment and review. Focused primarily in Arts and Sciences and the College of Technology, we will schedule these as needed in other units.
4. Establish role of Council for Teaching and Learning (a Faculty Senate body) in larger assessment and program review efforts, based on Council’s role in general education course assessment.
5. Assessment and Program Review website revision under larger Office of Institutional Research website will focus on offering web-based assessment resources, as well as information concerning physical resources in Assessment office. We will also move toward warehousing all of our assessment and program review data on a secure section of this website.
6. Attendance at annual Association of Institutional Research conference for workshops and presentations on effective OIR practices to support assessment and IR functions.
7. College/departmental-level workshops for general faculty on both course-based assessment and review and program-based assessment and review.
8. Institutional planning and assessment workshop with Trudy Banta on May 10, 2005.

What needs to be done to meet this recommendation?

While much progress is being made in addressing the concerns in all three items of Recommendation 5, most of the work has been focused on the following parts of each item:

Item 1: develop and implement a program review schedule for all sectors.

Item 2: identify and maintain effective support mechanisms in institutional research.

Item 3: review for revision, outcomes assessment and program review.

The work remaining to be conceptualized and accomplished focuses largely on the following parts of each item:

Item 1: develop and implement an institutional outcomes assessment plan, as well as overt college-level plans which reflect the relevant program-based plans.

Item 2: identify and maintain effective support mechanisms in institutional research and financial accounting.

Item 3: review for revision, University’s planning, institutional assessment, and budgeting processes.

Item 4: assuring appropriate linkages between the University’s planning, institutional assessment, outcomes assessment, program review, and budgeting processes.

Item 5: explicitly assigning specific responsibility for accountability and oversight of these processes.