1. The Assessment Plan Composer: Meeting SACS Requirements
Phil Moore & Susan Prior
Institutional Planning & Assessment
USC Columbia

2. Why Do We Need This System?
SACS was under-whelmed with our program assessments at our 2000 accreditation visit
Episodic
Little continuity
Often was not “student learning at the program level”
Plans all looked differently, with different understanding of what the terms meant
Needed a way to hold people accountable and help them see the value of assessment

3. Changes to SACS accreditation requirements
Core requirements
2.5 The institution engages in ongoing, integrated, and institution-wide research-based planning and evaluation processes that incorporate a systematic review of programs and services that (a) results in continuing improvement, and (b) demonstrates that the institution is effectively accomplishing its mission.
“ongoing” “integrated” “continuing improvement” & related to mission

4. New SACS Terminology Comprehensive Standards
3.3.1 The institution identifies expected outcomes for its educational programs and its administrative and educational support services; assesses whether it achieves these outcomes; and provides evidence of improvement based on analysis of those results.
“outcomes- are they being met?” & “evidence of improvements (changes) based upon results”

5. So, APC Components . . . Mission statement Goals
Student Learning Outcomes (aka Objectives)
Criteria
Measures
Results
Use of Results

6. The APC Design
To help encourage on-going assessment, the system is made up of two components:
The Assessment Report – this includes Results and Use of Results
The Assessment Plan – this changes based upon what you learned from the assessment results etc. in the previous year’s report
The two together are the Assessment “Document”

7. Guidelines for the Terminology
Mission statement
Should be relatively short
Doesn’t need to be program specific – a departmental mission statement is fine
Must tie in with the larger, institutional mission statement

8. Terminology Goals Curriculum Broad aims of the program
Are usually pretty general
Often lead in with “The department expects all graduates to . . .”
Curriculum
Not a listing of specific courses necessarily, but where are the students being exposed to the experiences they need to reach the goal?

9. Terminology Student Learning Outcomes (Objectives)
More specific versions of the Goal statements – can seem a little redundant
Main difference is that Outcomes include ACTIVE verbs that describe what the students will do to show they have reached the learning goal
Outcomes must be measurable – for example, can you measure something like “have knowledge of”?
Often use “students will demonstrate . . .”

10. Terminology Criteria Methods
What the students collectively will do, under what conditions, and what you will consider acceptable
Methods
The logistics for each outcome. Who will do what when, in relation to collecting the necessary information?

11. Terminology Results Use of Results
(These two sections appear only in the Annual Report section of each Assessment Document)
Results
What did you learn about how well your students are performing? Should be one result for each Goal/Outcome combination
Use of Results
What did you do (change) as a result of what you learned? This is what SACS wants to see as evidence of program improvement.

12. Plan Manager
This is the main menu for the step-by-step process in the development of the Assessment plan.

13. Example of the screens

14. Everything should “fit” together under each Goal

15. No need to retype what stays stable year to year

16. The Final Assessment Document

17. In conclusion System was designed to solve some problems
Inconsistencies
“Nice” language saying nothing
Should help people to see the advantages of doing good assessment and make it seem manageable
We must demonstrate we are assessing our programs and making necessary changes to SACS

18. Feedback from the SACS Consultant
Good start
Appropriate terminology generally – she did encourage us to shift to Learning Outcomes
Need to strengthen the plans themselves

19. Questions or Comments?

20. The Demonstration Site
If you are interested in “playing around” with the system to see if it might meet your institution’s needs, please log on to
To be an Administrator,
UserID = Admin; Password = Admin
To be a User,
UserID = Planwriter; Password = Planwriter
As this is a demonstration site, multiple users may be making changes to the same plans!

21. Additional Information
1st year cost– hosted, maintained, and supported by USC’s Computer Services = $5000
(No hardware or software installation is required on your part)
Each additional year – 18% of initial year cost ($900)
(The system works on a Windows 200X server with IIS 5+ and SQL Server 2000)
For additional information about the Assessment Plan Composer, please contact Susan Prior –
For additional information about licensing, please contact Chad Hardaway –
For additional information about the technical aspects, please contact Eric Patterson –