So much of what you read about accreditation, or anything for that matter, focuses on best practices. Best practices for assessing student attainment of learning outcomes. Best practices for institutional strategic planning. Best practices for accreditation. All of that is important and valuable, but equally (or perhaps more) valuable is knowing what not to do. While not an exhaustive list, here are a few things that I have seen. Read all the way through, the last practice is the worst.
Student Attainment of Learning Outcomes
Don’t let faculty design the system that you will use without guidance. Strong guidance. In my experience, faculty who are left to their own devices will write complicated and wordy outcomes, develop complicated and time consuming data collection processes (comprehensive, but complicated and time consuming), and will then suffer from what I call assessment fatigue and the final steps of reflecting on the data and identifying changes seeking improvement will be haphazard, at best. Guidance, such as that in the Assessment Academy, has been proven to help with this.
Other things not to do include reporting an average across a group of students, or worse, averaging Likert-scale or categorical data. You cannot produce a mean from this sort of data without causing statisticians to roll over in their graves. One last example? Don’t wait until you sit down to write the narrative to examine Program SLO reports for quality.
Institutional Strategic Planning
The absolute worst here is when an institution spends considerable time and money on the development of a new strategic plan, has their marketing people dress it up in a pretty format, gets it approved by the Board, and then puts it on a shelf. No annual reporting. No accountability. Some don’t even wipe the dust off once in a while. Then it comes time to write about it. For SACSCOC institutions, it is Core Requirement 7.1. Get a load of these adjectives: Ongoing…Comprehensive…integrated…research-based. But it has been on a shelf for three years.
Another problem I have seen is when the strategic plan runs in parallel to the institutional planning and assessment processes used to make a case for compliance with 8.2.c and 7.3 (Again, SACSCOC standards). The process of identifying outcomes for these two standards, setting annual goals, building action plans, etc. is the lifeblood of the strategic plan execution. SACSCOC institutions should have process for 7.1, 8.2.c, and 7.3 that are inextricably bound. The Southeastern Accreditation Consultants strategic planning module does this and it has been favorably reviewed by SACSCOC teams.
Writing for Accreditation
The absolute worst of all three I have only seen twice among client institutions. One person is doing it all. No, not one person running the show and coordinating a wide variety of narrative authors who are writing within their respective subject areas. One person writing it all. In both cases where I have observed this, my contact, the one doing all the writing, was at least once reduced to tears, or nearly so while on screen with me. This is too big for one person to do. There is not enough money…well, there probably is, but that is not what these people are paid.
A second egregious failure, is when an institution attends the orientation for their reaffirmation class and then goes home. And does nothing. I have see this one twice as well. No, you don’t have 15-21 months to write the Compliance Certification, ours is due in nine months. Or six. Get started! An institution should have at least the outline of a plan before orientation and then work should start in January (again, for SACSCOC institutions).
What did I miss? I’m sure there is a nearly infinite list of worst practices. I would welcome the chance to talk to you about yours, and to help straighten things out.
At Southeastern Accreditation Consultants, we’re ready to collaborate and support your accreditation journey. We bring best practices, proven strategies, and experienced narrative review to the table. We offer individualized services to best meet your needs during the journey. Contact us to get started.