Enhancing Campus Assessment: Balancing Accreditation Carrots and Sticks

The Carrot and the Stick: Interactions betweenRegional Accreditation and Campus Assessment Initiatives Karen Helm Director, University Planning and Analysis NC State University April 7, 2003

Focus • Does accreditation foster or chill campus assessment efforts? • How do we manage the “carrots” and “sticks” of accreditation to encourage assessment on our campuses?

Underlying values • Faculty driven • Formative • Unique to each program • Departmental uses of results are more important than institutional or external uses

Interactions: positive effects • The call for assessment • Focus on student learning • Creation of interinstitutional exchanges • A pause for analytical self-reflection • A model for information-based, organizational change

Interactions: negative effects(old SACS) • Externally mandated • Assumes institutionalization • Mixes formative and summative processes • Emphasizes documentation leads to cookbooks and checklists • Expects honesty but uses a bludgeon

Accreditation processesof the 1980s and 1990s* • Compliance behavior • A “train on its own track” • Unconnected to decisions that matter * From Peter Ewell (2002) “Re-Inventing Accreditation”, keynote address to WASC annual meeting

New SACS • Continued shift toward student learning, including assessment • Less codification, more open to institutional variation and a “pattern of evidence” • Greater focus on issues of consequence to the institution, less on documentation • Ongoing relationship, more formative • Still a bludgeon

WASC • The “new spirit of WASC”: value-adding, generative, collaborative, adaptive • Oriented toward educational effectiveness and student learning • Culture of evidence that informs decision-making • Ongoing dialogue and exchange among institutions • Focus on consulting and supporting, not compliance

Accreditation’s Carrots • Encourages assessment • Encourages leadership commitment • Provides evidence of program achievement • Do it any way you want to • Define compliance yourself • Use SACS process to leverage institutional improvement

Sticks • “Gotcha” process • If you fail, your institution is at serious, public risk • Document it, or we won’t pass you • Don’t change the process

Tending your assessment garden: using carrots and sticks to your advantage • Depends on institutional culture: sticks may work better in some • Think about the process all the way to [2006] • How closely do you tie SACS and assessment

Your experiences and ideas • Which carrots, which sticks have you used on your campus to advance assessment? • Which strategies work better in the short run? In the long run? • Which have the greatest effect on student learning? On faculty motivation?

Enhancing Campus Assessment: Balancing Accreditation Carrots and Sticks