Fundamentals for Assessment Success: A Sustainable Data Organization Strategy Within a Construction Management Technology Program

Abstract

Few events within a successful academic program are as administratively demanding as an onsite accreditation assessment visit. It is a particularly stressful period where a program must fully account for itself by presenting evidence to external evaluators that its students, faculty, alumni, administrators, curriculum, policies, resources, and facilities satisfy a rigorous criteria established by an accrediting body. To accomplish this, the program must retrieve all of the relevant data, compile it into a prodigious report and organize it in a manner that is both profoundly clear and obvious while simultaneously complying with the report format requirements prescribed by the accrediting institution. Anyone who has experienced an on-site accreditation visit is very familiar with these daunting challenges. A number of factors seem to conspire against the successful execution of this documentation process. One of the most fundamental is the complexity associated with the ongoing, sustainable, semester-to-semester compilation of data from a myriad of different sources. Of these various sources, faculty is one of the most critical. It is the faculty after all, that is the origin of the assessment data that forms the bedrock of any program’s assessment regimen. This challenge is compounded if the program is heavily dependent on adjunct faculty. Many educational institutions that offer a technology-based curriculum are particularly reliant on adjunct faculty. Clearly adjunct faculty is highly valued in technology programs for its course – specific expertise and industry correlation. However this faculty is typically teaching as a supplement to a separate full time career and therefore does not have the resources available to devote to a protracted or confusing assessment routine. In order to compile a successful assessment report, a sustainable assessment program must be established that distills the complex requirements into components that can be easily and efficiently executed by its faculty. The reporting system must be sufficiently clear and unambiguous such that it becomes a part of the semester close-out routine. Additionally, a reporting system must be developed that efficiently captures crucial assessment data, making it available for systematic review at the conclusion of every semester and ultimately for inclusion in the accreditation report. This paper documents the process of a construction management technology program as it developed its own ultimately successful assessment structure by focusing on the methods and the tools. The tools described include: Simplified, unambiguous forms that capture assessment data A reporting system to facilitate data dissemination A formalized process that ensures collaboration through the utilization of the captured data on a regular, end-of-semester routine Implementation of an assessment routine that clearly links course data to outcomes to program.