Collecting Student Data for Accreditation Assessment

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Date
2011-01-28
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Volume Title
Publisher
Virginia Tech
Abstract

This paper seeks to identify one of the key problems faced by academic institutions seeking accreditation. The accreditation process requires academic institutions to conduct a self-study analyzing how well a given program is meeting the learning outcomes the accreditation board uses in its assessment. This self-study by schools often contains qualitative or subjective data and does not directly correlate the learning outcomes being measured to student performance. The lack of quantitative measurements at a granular level means that it is difficult for the academic institution to prove that it was effective in meeting a particular outcome.

I propose in this paper a tool that is both efficient and effective in capturing quantitative data at the student level. The tool maps specific coursework to learning outcomes and shows how students performed towards that outcome over the duration of a particular course or program. Additionally, the data collected by the tool can be used to assess course and program design.

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Keywords
accreditation, assessment, Web-CAT
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