As you embark on the journey of implementing or re-engaging with SPOL, it is important to understand the importance of maintaining momentum throughout your training sessions to ensure your Institution’s success. In this guide, we aim to provide you with actionable strategies tailored to effectively support your training efforts.

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.

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.

Assessment practices in higher education directly impact many aspects of the institution. This can include student success and continuous improvement, among other areas. Below, we share ten ways your institution can improve your assessment process.

Strategic planning can shape the future of a higher education institution, from effectively managing budgeted funds to driving continuous improvement efforts. Below, we outline ten ways your institution can get the most out of its strategic planning efforts.

Each institution generally has the flexibility to define its administrative and support departments as it sees fit. A good starting point is to define administrative and support departments based on the institution’s organization chart. If you choose to define administrative and support departments differently than those shown on the organization chart, just be sure to have a good (and documented) rationale for doing so – your peer reviewers will probably ask about it during your reaccreditation process.

It was more than a decade ago that the field of higher education started to focus on assessment. Educators were asking questions about what, and how much, students were learning throughout their experiences in higher education. At first, just assessing student learning and tracking the results was yeoman’s work.

Developing or updating a strategic plan for an institution of higher education is a substantial endeavor. Engaging colleagues in committee and subcommittee meetings, discussing the future direction of the institution, and coming to a consensus on goals to guide the institution for the life of the plan: these considerations are at the heart of the collaborative process that is strategic planning in higher education.

One of the most common questions I get from folks implementing is, "How would you suggest we set that up?"  I must always answer that question with one of my own: "What does your process look like?"

The beauty (and the challenge) of SPOL is that it does not require you to conform to a specific process for strategic planning, assessment, budget development, or managing your accreditation self-study.