OPA Assessment Spotlight Interview

Dr. Marjorie Buckner
Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies

Click here to read more about this semester's assessment spotlight.

17th Annual Graduate Student Research Poster Competition

Office of Planning and Assessment (OPA) staff participated in the Graduate School Poster Competition on Tuesday, April 10 at the Overton Hotel. The poster competition is a professional development opportunity for students as they present their work to people who are not in their field of study. OPA staff participated in the evaluation of students' research methods, research questions, results, and research implications. We were honored to be a part of this year's competition, and we look forward to continued involvement in next year's event. We want to acknowledge the Graduate School for their dedicated efforts to honor graduate student learning and graduate assessment.

Annual Assessment Meetings for Department Chairs

OPA has started meeting with department chairs regarding their annual assessment reports. This 1-hour annual meeting focuses on providing feedback to each degree program on their student learning outcomes, assessment methods, results, and actions for improvement. During this meeting, we review the faculty list with each chair, and ask the chair to update the list for our records. We also share information on the department's contributions to outreach and engagement, as reported in Raiders Engaged and DigitalMeasures. The OPA office expects to meet with all department chairs by the end of Summer 2018.

Program Assessment Review (PAR) Process

Each year at Texas Tech University (TTU), degree programs are responsible for reporting their program assessment results for the previous year. Once each degree program's assessment report is complete, OPA reviews each program. Each program's assessment is captured in a 4 column report, which is produced in TracDat. This report outlines the history of assessment for each program and is used in reporting for the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools - Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC). OPA has reviewed all 2016-2017 assessment plans, along with any follow-ups that were added in 2015-2016. The program assessment rubric (PAR) was used when reviewing each degree program. The PAR process is complete and OPA is meeting with Department Chairs to discuss their department's assessment evaluation. Below is a dashboard that displays the University's PAR evaluation results from 2016-2017. PAR evaluation results from 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 are shown for comparison. This comparison shows that Actions for Improvement will be the focus for this upcoming assessment reporting period. Actions for Improvement are critical to showing continuous improvement.

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Raiders Engaged Projects (2016-2017 Academic Year)

The Raiders Engaged annual survey is administered by Texas Tech University as the primary method for assessing its academic and non-academic outreach and engagement activities. The instrument was developed in partnership with the Office of Planning and Assessment, the Office of Academic Engagement, and Application & Development. Community engagement consists of collaborations between institutions of higher education and their larger communities for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity. Engagement occurs when faculty or staff members' research, teaching, administrative, or service activities significantly engage their scholarly or professional expertise with communities and/or organizations outside the university with the direct goal of improving outcomes for those who live and work in them.

Data presented here represents outreach and engagement projects for the 2016-2017 Academic Year, as reported by TTU faculty and staff from academic and administrative units. This dashboard demonstrates the high level of activity the exists with outreach and engagement, even with voluntary participation. While certain colleges do report higher levels of outreach and engagement, each college contributes to a significant amount of activity that ranges from the local community to around the globe. Most notably, the data also demonstrates significant contributions to the local K-12 community. A final Raiders Engaged report will be available this summer on the OPA website and the AY2018 Raiders Engaged survey is planned to be available Spring 2018 and will remain open until December 2018.

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Faculty Credentialing Dashboard

The Office of Planning and Assessment is excited to introduce a dashboard displaying faculty credentialing statistics. OPA staff hope this information will be valuable to faculty and chairs to quickly view faculty activity and to compare data with other units across campus. The dashboard demonstrates TTU's credentialing efforts to ensure that our institution is continuously compliant with SACSCOC standards and Texas House Bill 2504. Faculty qualifications and measures of productivity are also displayed. Finally, scores of DigitalMeasures data quality and satisfaction are exhibited for the various units across campus. OPA staff hope that the high level of faculty activity that exists here at TTU is easily viewed by examining this dashboard.

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