1. Myrah R. Stockdale, M.S., B.B.A. AAHLE 2017 Louisville, KY
Connecting and Communicating Assessment Cycles Across the Organization: Operationalizing Assessment with Asana
Myrah R. Stockdale, M.S., B.B.A.
AAHLE 2017
Louisville, KY

2. Learning Progression & Objectives
General Information about ASANA
Getting Started with ASANA
To familiarize the audience with the application
Organizing an Assessment Cycle with ASANA
Ways to communicate across the organization
Incorporating InstaGantt
Learners will be able to discuss the purpose and general features of ASANA
Learners will know how to access ASANA, create a project, create tasks, and create subtasks
Learners will be able to discuss how ASANA can be used to create and communicate an assessment cycle
Learners will be able to describe InstaGantt’s use

3. General Information about ASANA
So, what is ASANA?
ASANA is a project management tool that is:
Free (for teams up to 15 members),
Intuitive, and
Helps reduce the number of s in your inbox
ASANA is flexible and helps to promote transparency within teams.
If going with an Enterprise package the tool is $375 a year. This does include premium features, unlimited team members, etc.
General Information about ASANA

4. General Information about ASANA
Getting Started
If you’re following along with the presentation, please go to:
General Information about ASANA

5. The Workflow of ASANA Workspace Tasks Sub-Tasks Projects PROJECTS
Workspaces
Where you see all of your projects
Projects
Organize your work into shared projects as lists for your initiatives, meetings, and programs.
Tasks
Break work into manageable pieces for you and your team.
Sub-Tasks
Break up a task into smaller parts, or show additional steps to complete an overall task.
PROJECTS
It’s important to note that a project may or may not have a finite ending point. In other words, some projects can and will be ongoing efforts while others will be more goal-oriented. Identifying these ongoing project will not only reduce said project-related exchange, but will also undoubtedly reduce the need for continuous planning and meetings outside of Asana after your team gets started.
Depending on the scope of your work, you may find it useful to drill-down more often than not, or vice versa. The good news is that Asana is equipped to handle both types of projects with equal grace and efficiency.
TASKS
As logic would dictate, tasks are the individual components of a specific project. For ongoing projects, tasks may be duplicated/repeated, or they may be broken down into sub-tasks and considered over a longer stretch of time. For more goal-oriented projects, tasks might best be visualized as the specific items on your to-do list. Either way, the flexibility is there to make Asana work for you, and not the other way around.

6. Brief Overview of What we Just learned
We learned in this section:
How to navigate to the ASANA application (i.e.,
Hopefully we signed up for and successfully logged in!
The general workflow and pieces of ASANA (i.e., workspace, projects, tasks, subtasks)
What each of the pieces of the workflow commonly look like
How does this help us with what is up next?
We will login to ASANA and use each of the pieces in the workflow to create our own example project(s)

7. Getting Started with ASANA

8. So lets build a project
CONSIDERATION
Getting Started with ASANA

9. Do I want My Project to be a List or a Board?
A board is a new style of project that creates a Kanban-style board. This is similar to having sticky notes. This can be particularly well suited for:
To-do lists
Dividing out tasks by person/site for a project
Contact lists
A list-style project allows you to list tasks for a project in one list. As we will see later in the presentation you can still organize these by categories, particular sub-projects, by person, year, etc.
Both styles allow for tasks, sub-tasks, assignment of tasks to people, deadlines, etc. It is a matter of personal preference in how you want to see the tasks organized

10. So we have a project, lets add some tasks
You can also create tasks in this menu which becomes available as you add tasks. In this window you can edit tasks, add descriptions, assign, put deadlines, add attachments, comment, tag, and add sub-tasks
The attachment is rather straight forward. If you or your team may need to add documents to the task (or for the sub tasks) the they can be added here.
We will talk more about subtasks on the next slide. But as an introduction, these are steps that you can add to any task.
The Tags are a great tool for filtering across projects or even filtering within a very large project.
You and your team can show each other and particular tasks ‘support’ by clicking the heart.
From the project dashboard you can type your task.
If you hit enter you can type another task
Getting Started with ASANA

11. Subtasks
Getting Started with ASANA

12. Practice Time Lets take some time to build a small project on our own.
Lets build a to-do list and populate it with tasks and subtasks that are relevant to you.
Getting Started with ASANA

13. Before we move on…
How do you see this tool being useful in your context?
Getting Started with ASANA

14. Brief Overview of What we Just learned
We learned in this section:
How to create projects, tasks, and subtasks
The types of project layouts that ASANA supports (Kanban boards and lists)
How to create subtasks in subtasks
How to assign deadlines and responsible individuals to tasks, subtasks, and sub-subtasks
How does this help us with what is up next?
Understanding the layout and getting a feel for the way that projects, tasks, and subtasks are arranged is helpful as we consider how to incorporate assessment cycles into ASANA.
Getting Started with ASANA

15. Organizing an Assessment Cycle with ASANA

16. Organizing an Assessment Cycle with ASANA
Influenced by Jane M. Souza’s AALHE presentation yesterday
Organizing an Assessment Cycle with ASANA
There is no one-size-fits-all approach that will work in assessment contexts. Therefore, I am not going to try to make it seem that way.
What I am sharing are some ways that I have used or envision using ASANA for higher education assessment cycles.
Organizing an Assessment Cycle with ASANA

17. Using ASANA To Communicate Assessment Cycles
In hacks you can enable Tab+b, which means you can put cats randomly onto you ASANA.
Using ASANA To Communicate Assessment Cycles
ASANA has a lot of great options for communication.
Organizing an Assessment Cycle with ASANA

18. Curricular Review Example
Organizing an Assessment Cycle with ASANA

19. Who can I communicate with?
ASANA can be used to communicate with any stakeholder that you’re interested in sharing information with.
What are some a number of that the app can be used to communicate about assessment:
Involving Deans, Department Chairs, Program Coordinators by having them follow particular tasks
Subscribe responsible individuals to the tasks and projects that they are involved in
Copy full projects to share with new teams, for new cycles, for demonstration purposes, etc.
Using the messaging function inside of the application
Syncing ASANA to calendars (or using the calendar inside the app)
Organizing an Assessment Cycle with ASANA

20. Discussion question
How do you think you can use ASANA to communicate about assessment at your school?
Organizing an Assessment Cycle with ASANA

21. Brief Overview of What we Just learned
We learned in this section:
How to assessment cycles can be communicated in ASANA including:
Linking to institutional /calendars
Utilizing the ‘follow’ option for stakeholders that need to know information but aren’t the ones acting
Utilizing messages and calendars within the app to talk to the team or discuss particular tasks
Assigning tasks and subtasks to others
How multi-year curricular assessment could be tracked using the app
How does this help us with what is up next?
These tools help us communicate with our stakeholders. ASANA links to a number of external applications, like InstaGantt. This tool gives a visualization that can inform programmatic assessment as well as provide evidence to accrediting bodies.
Organizing an Assessment Cycle with ASANA

22. instaGAnTT

23. Incorporating InstaGantt
What is a Gantt Chart?
A Gantt chart, commonly used in project management, is one of the most popular and useful ways of showing activities (tasks or events) displayed against time. On the left of the chart is a list of the activities and along the top is a suitable time scale. Each activity is represented by a bar; the position and length of the bar reflects the start date, duration and end date of the activity (Gantt.com, 2017)
Incorporating InstaGantt

24. Incorporating InstaGantt
Accessing InstaGantt
Go to:
Incorporating InstaGantt

25. Brief Overview of What we Just learned
We learned in this section:
We very briefly looked at InstaGantt and its ability to help with workload and Gantt charting.
How does this help us with what is up next?
For those interested in using ASANA, this helps them evaluate workload and implementation.
Incorporating InstaGantt

26. Questions
Thank you so much!