Collecting Student Data for Accreditation Assessment

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 assessme...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Ringenbach, Michael
Other Authors: Computer Science
Format: Others
Published: Virginia Tech 2014
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10919/31209
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-02112011-010047/
Description
Summary: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. === Master of Science