Building Your Units CQI Documentation Portfolio
Here is an overview and explanation of the information that will be input into WEAVE that uses Academic Affairs as an example.
Mission/Purpose
Unit Mission, Purpose, and Vision statements should be clearly aligned with the university’s mission, values, and priorities.
Mission: To attain regional visibility as an educational institution that provides affordable educational opportunities to traditionally aged students, adult learners, and historically underserved populations through transformative education, community engagement, and servant leadership.
Vision: To be recognized nationally as an institution that successfully prepares diverse communities of learners for lives of civic engagement, professional success, and intellectual independence through a commitment to equity and democratic service, continuous learning and improvement, and inclusive academic excellence.
Goals
Goals should also focus on gaps, deficiencies, or areas of improvement. They should be concrete, measurable (quantitatively or qualitatively) and offer opportunities for formative review.Facilitating Student Success: Academic Affairs will pursue this goal through the creation of intentional academic communities. An Intentional Community is one designed and planned around collective values and ideals in which the sharing of resources and responsibilities is a basic expectation.
Objectives/Outcomes
Objectives and Outcomes reflect specific achievements in relation to campus and university mission, values, and strategic priorities, e.g. “improving undergraduate advising aligns with IU’s Foundations of Enduring Excellence, enhances student success, and increases stakeholder engagement” and is responsive to the AQIP System Appraisal Report’s Opportunity 3R2: “IU Northwest may want to consider establishing benchmarks and target. This, in turn, may assist them in better serving students and planning processes that are intended to improve student and stakeholder satisfaction.”
Once you have input objectives/outcomes, you will be able to create associations between these and other Unit Goals, Campus and University Strategic Goals, and Accreditation Criteria.
Measures/Targets/Findings
Measures are established in relation to three distinct states: where we are now, where we are in relation to peers and aspirational institutions, and where we would like to be (Target). e.g. “student satisfaction with advising is measured in relation to our campus senior survey, data from other regional campuses, and NSSE data.” Targets specify the amount of progress we want to make, and the time period in which we wish to make it and will be determined by Findings, which are produced through reporting processes that are qualitative, quantitative, or both (e.g. NSSE “survey responses to the question, ‘to what extent have your academic advisors listened closely to your concerns or questions?’ show that IU Northwest first-year students said “very little” about 19% of the time, while our peers’ students said this about 8% of the time.”). To effectively improve advising quality in a way that is measurable IU Northwest would set a target goal of 8% or less as a measure of quality improvement.”
Action Plan Tracking
Action Plans assess progress toward the goal and often include recommendations for realigning or refocusing strategic efforts. While planning should be guided by concrete goals, measures, outcomes, etc., it should also be both reflective and flexible enough to allow for adjustments to both the process and its outcomes. (e.g., the establishment of the RedHawk Advising Fellows position, supported by IU’s Student Success Fee, reflects a strategic approach to addressing advising concerns drawn from recommendations developed by the IU Northwest Advising Council.)
IMPORTANT: When information is initially placed into WEAVE, the ENTRY STATUS for all entries should be DRAFT/IN PROCESS. it will only be saved as a final document at the conclusion of the yearly cycle, and this will be done by the Office of Institutional Effectiveness following review and approval of the Chancellor, the Vice Chancellors, and the Executive Directors.
Following the April 2016 HLC visit, a final campus-wide forum will be held to review the effectiveness of WEAVE for documenting campus CQI efforts. At that time we will also present a more comprehensive discussion of WEAVE’s analysis, reporting, and document management capabilities.
