Assessment Management:

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Assessment Management Software and
Surprises (mostly good) TAIR 2008
Paul Orser, Ph.D. Associate VP for Planning and
Effectiveness Texas AM University-Corpus Christi
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Assessment Management Issues We Faced

• We had moved from paper to a relatively primitive
  digital system
• But, assessment bookkeeping chores were still
  burning up far too much professional staff time
• Our home grown system worked OK for individual
  units, but was almost impossible to integrate and
  consolidate
• Difficult to demonstrate how the sum of the
  parts contributed to the whole University
  strategic direction
• Difficult to demonstrate and document linkages
  between planning, assessment, budgeting, and
  continuous improvement
• We needed a better way to prepare for SACS
  off-site compliance review

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What we were looking for in an assessment
management system

• A system that would streamline the assessment
  documentation process
• A system that would free our assessment
  professional staff to serve as assessment coaches
  and consultants
• A system that was intuitive and easy to use, so
  that the software did not get in the way of the
  job we needed to do
• A system that used similar logic to our home
  grown approach, so transition and training would
  be relatively easy
• A system that was web based and imposed little or
  no additional hardware and software IT load on
  the campus, so we could manage it ourselves
  without depending on our already overworked
  campus geeks
• A system we could afford, both to purchase and
  maintain, and which would help us manage costs
  given increasing demands for our services
  (good deeds rarely go unpunished!)

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Expectations and Surprises

• We knew that WEAVEonline could solve the
  organizational problem of managing more than 140
  individual unit annual assessment reports
• Good surprises
• Transition was relatively painless (thanks to
  some back office magic and very talented and
  highly credible assessment professional staff)
• Participation is nearly 100 (currently 146 of
  147 units are complete)
• Built-in, step by step, logical structure has
  helped improve the quality of unit level
  assessment
• by making the logic of the relationships between
  mission, outcomes, measures, expected results,
  findings, and improvement plans explicit
• Units are discovering for themselves the gaps and
  discontinuities in their thinking, and are
  becoming much more aware of the differences
  between assumptions and evidence.
• Administrative continuity valuedepartment chair
  personnel changes

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Could what worked at the unit level also work at
the university strategic plan level?

• How could we use WEAVEonline to document and
  measure progress on the University strategic
  plan?
• Once we realized that we could set up the
  university mission and strategic objectives as a
  unit of its own, inside WEAVE, things began to
  fall into place
• WEAVE does not use conventional planning
  terminology like goals and strategies, so
  must be careful about definitions and have a
  willingness to adapt
• We used the WEAVE structure to guide a strategic
  plan review this past summer

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Measuring Progress and Documenting
Achievement Facts and Figures AND Painting the
PictureThe power of Annual Reports
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Built-in section headers need additional
institutional instructions for use in order to
get consistent reports that discuss the right
things in the right places
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Issues and Next Steps

• Currently WEAVE captures findings electronically,
  but does not store the evidence electronically
• WEAVE currently does not have a good way of
  documenting assessment-based budget requests and
  actions
• WEAVE currently does not have the capability for
  sign-off and comment on unit-level reports by
  the higher level adminstrators to whom the units
  report
• WEAVEonline has assured us that most of these
  capabilities are in the works, but development on
  the new version is running significantly behind
  the original release timetable

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http//pie.tamucc.edu/