Campus Assessment Network
Notes from Meeting of
February 1, 2011
The meeting of the Campus Assessment Network (CAN) was held Tuesday, February1, 2011 at 9:00
a.m. in Adams Hall B13.
Welcome and Introductions
Members were introduced and thanked for their attendance.
Members present:
Carolinda Douglass, Crystal Coppel, William Boelcke, Brian Lance, Amy Buhrow, Carrie Zack, Mary
Pritchard, Deborah Robertson, Amy Franklin, Evelyn Comber, Sandi Carlisle, Eric Niemi, Nora
Lindvall and Greg Long.
Announcements and Updates
Amy Buhrow announced that she and Jack Marchewka submitted a proposal to ACCSB and it was
accepted. They will be presenting on the culture of assessment. Amy will share the presentation
with CAN at a later meeting.
Amy Buhrow announced that she was a part of the Higher Education course this past fall that did
projects for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management. Amy’s group completed a project for
Military Student Services. They will now be trying to publish something based on that assessment
project. At a future meeting Amy will bring one of the Graduate Assistants that worked with her on
the project to talk about the project to the group.
Douglass passed out the Assessment Expo flier and invited everyone to come. Registration for the
Expo is on the Assessment website.
Douglass passed out the flier for the upcoming speaker Joan Hawthorne. Registration is available
on the Faculty Development Webiste.
Presentations
(1) Nora Lindvall and Eric Niemi, spoke about the Student Advisory Committee on Learning
Outcomes (SACLO).
A flier for SACLO was passed out with information about the group and the upcoming meeting
dates and locations.
Lindvall and Niemi mentioned that they want to engage students in the learning and assessment
process. SACLO would like students to know what “assessment” is and would like to put together
an “Assessment 101” workshop for students to attend. SACLO would like to see course evaluations
filled out honestly and not just have “perfectly” marked for all of the categories.
(2) Carrie Zack, Coordinator, Teacher Certification Assessment, gave an update on the NCATE
visit.
All of the standards were met and access was recently granted to the report so now we are in the
process of making factual corrections. After that, a rejoinder version will be given to us and we can
then supply any evidence to areas the report says evidence was lacking. In the rejoinder we can also
say why any “areas of improvement” should be removed from the report.
We do still have to do an annual report but we were approved for 5 years and we are still in good
standing.
(3) William Boelcke, VSA Coordinator/Research Associate, shared information about Google
Analytics.
Voluntary System Accountability (VSA) and College Portrait for most intents and purposes are the
same. The College Portrait website has a page called “Dashboard” and for all of the schools
involved in VSA the “Dashboard” page is the same format. A lot of the categories are also the same
on the websites but the information that is put into the categories is specific to NIU so that part is
different from school to school. We are continually adding new information on to the website. The
website can be accessed on the Office of Assessment Services website or through the A-Z index,
going to College Portrait.
Google Analytics is a free service provided by Google. It can track how many hits a website gets
and how people are getting to the website. For example, by typing in the URL directly or getting to
the website from another website. Site usage, such as new visits, visits, page views, pages/visits,
average time on site and the bounce rate can also be tracked. You can set it up to filter out certain
IP addresses. The VSA website is geared toward perspective students and their parents who are
looking at NIU as a possible school to attend. It is not widely highlighted and we would like to
encourage people to look at the website more. Since VSA does not market themselves, maybe NIU
could look into marketing VSA as something for prospective students and parents to check out
when researching NIU.
Future Directions
CAN members who have an assessment practice they would like to share at future meetings are
encouraged to contact Carolinda Douglass at cdoug@niu.edu
Meeting adjourned at 10:10 a.m.