Program reviews are essential for assessing the effectiveness and quality of educational programs in academic institutions. However, the traditional approach to conducting these reviews can often be overwhelming for faculty and contributing institutional staff members. The process typically involves compiling extensive data, analyzing outcomes, and crafting detailed narratives, all within a limited timeframe. Fortunately, there's a unique and efficient technique that can streamline the review process and alleviate stress: Annual 5-Year Program Review templates.

In higher education, strategic planning serves as the compass guiding institutions toward continuous improvement to ensure the growth and progress of their initiatives. Through an understanding of the relationship between top-down and bottom-up strategic planning approaches, we are proposing a balanced synthesis that leverages the strengths of both models to foster institutional success. 

Engaging faculty in program learning assessment is a critical aspect of fostering a robust institutional culture focused on meaningful student learning outcomes. We sat down with a few institutional experts to explore three effective strategies they have used to cultivate faculty involvement on their campuses and share a few highlights of our conversation below.

Cordance today announced its acquisition of Strategic Planning Online LLC. (SPOL) of Coral Springs, Florida. This new relationship will allow SPOL management and employees the opportunity to benefit directly from the many years of expertise of the Cordance team and allows SPOL the advantage of Cordance’s financial resources to help scale the company.

Institutions of Higher Education (IHE) produce inspiring vision and mission statements, strategic plans, academic master plans, strategic enrollment plans, campus master plans, and many others; but if these plans do not align with how resources are actually allocated, they are merely “plans on a shelf” and not the living documents that IHE’s need to satisfy regional accreditors and stakeholders. 

Have you ever dreamed of a solution to your Institutional Effectiveness (IE) challenges, but then realized that there are institutional barriers to your success?  We have all been to conferences where we sit in the audience listening to an institution present an amazing “Best Practice” in IE, only to realize that it would never work at our institution due to organizational inertia. Organizational inertia is the tendency of an institution to continue on its current trajectory due to resource or routine rigidity.

As academic departments work to create rubrics and other measurement tools, defining “quality” at the student performance level is especially elusive. Software can emulate these tools and faculty can enter results, but in a virtual environment are faculty meeting to discuss and assess the aggregate data? Or are they simply letting software compile a final score and trusting that overall students are successful or not successful?

The COVID pandemic threw institutions worldwide for a loop in 2020. It’s safe to say that every higher education institution, small or large, private or public, had some sort of local strategic plan in place. However, those plans more often than not were either COVID modified or completely revamped because of the need to re-examine goals and objectives for planned initiatives, ongoing projects, and program development.

Verifying faculty credentialing is an essential part of any institutional or programmatic process, as it ensures that any individual instructor is qualified to teach a particular subject. Without verification of credentials, you can’t assure academic quality, regardless of how popular an instructor might rate by her students.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, institutions have quickly adopted online learning environments. The move online promotes social distance and safety for students and staff, especially as the coronavirus outbreak continues to grow. This move also provides institutions with the unique opportunity to modernize their assessment processes.

Below, we share some insight into how your institution can incorporate assessment into your online learning environment and why the move online can help your faculty get more done without extra effort.