Institutional Effectiveness Manual

The purpose of the manual is to provide direction to faculty, academic administrators, and college support and operations administrators for developing and evaluating their Institutional Effectiveness (IE) plans. At Peace College, outcomes of IE activities serve to help academic and administrative areas plan effectively, assess progress, use data to make decisions and/or determine redirection.

Assessment and Planning

The Assessment Process

In this age of accountability and data-driven decision making, assessment has a diversity of meanings. Peace College perceives assessment as a process in which evidence is gathered, analyzed, and used to determine what is working and what needs to be improved and what needs to be discontinued. This includes both programs and student outcomes.

Procedures for Institutional Effectiveness and Planning

A rationale, systematic approach to planning should begin with reliable results of the above assessment process.
This includes identifying critical questions, which afford a conversation about perceived issues to be addressed and expected resolves/outcomes. Additionally, clear and measurable outcomes must be documented, periodically assessed as points for feedback and/or redirection.

Strategic Plan

Succinctly, strategic planning seeks to determine where an organization is going in the next year or few years and how it is going to get there. As Peace College looks beyond its sesquicentennial and toward the next phase in institutional development, the strategic planning process continues to build upon longstanding strengths, global trends, information technology, and forges new goals that increase and focus its programs to prepare graduates for the twenty-first century.

Learning Outcomes by School and Program

Program outcomes are specific administrative or academic program objectives. Program outcomes identify what will be accomplished by the academic department or program and/or perceptions about what was accomplished.

The following assessment sites provide either actual examples or Institutional Effectiveness plans and evaluations or IE manuals with suggested ways to approach developing IE plans

Assessment Forms

Academic Program Assessment

An integral part of Peace's assessment and planning process involves individual units-academic and administrative-setting annual goals and evaluating progress toward these goals at the end of each year. Conclusions drawn from this evaluation process should, ideally, lead to each unit developing a plan for improvement that feeds into the subsequent year's goals.

Each unit:

1. Submits goals (administrative units) and student learning outcomes (academic programs), along with unit-generated ideas about assessment methods for each goal or learning outcome, to the Institutional Effectiveness Office before September 30 of that year.
2. The Institutional Effectiveness Office approves the goals (or outcomes) and assessment methods.
3. Prior to July 15 of the following year, the unit submits a report demonstrating progress toward each goal or outcome. For any goals or outcomes that are not completely met, the unit prepares a plan for addressing the unmet goal in the following year.