Improvement Dimension Feedback
University of Northern Iowa
Betsy Griffin, Policy Center Advisor
Remember the purpose of this feedback is to give you an outsider’s reaction and reflection on
your report. Obviously, there is institutional context and detail of which I am unaware. The
questions are for the purpose of promoting thought and discussion among your Task Force. You
don’t need to respond to me or to do anything in particular in regards to them.
The Improvement Dimension certainly did a thorough job and has documented the work very
well in the appendices as well as the report. This information should be very useful to the
programs. I am giving feedback primarily to the report itself, but am also using the appendices
for my understanding.
Current Situation
PI 9.1 & PI 9.2
I will respond to these sections together, to keep responses to each initiative in one place.
Orientation: You might want to clarify that there are three orientation programs for readers
who won’t have or refer to appendices. My first thought was that there were others and only
these three were assessed. The good news here is that all three have some kind of assessment
in place and are using them for program improvement. On page 7, the Jump Start Program
evaluation is left out of the discussion.
Residence Life Programming: Residence Life seems to be doing a very thorough job of
programming and assessing their programs. Behavioral correlates could be added to the
satisfaction surveys in some cases either through asking about specific behaviors or using
incidence reports. It occurred to me that participation may be low in some surveys because of
the frequency of surveys. Overall, DOR seems to be doing a great job in both assessing and
using assessment results.
Liberal Arts Core/ category I : It is encouraging to see MAPP and NSSE data are now being
shared; however, you report low attendance at workshops and no sense of the extent to which
posted results are used. Has there an effort to work directly with the departments to consider
results relevant to their areas? Department level involvement in the assessment process is key.
It appears that Oral Communications is in a good position to initiate systematic assessment with
the existence of common assignments and rubrics in place. The absence of systematic
assessments for core courses that involve the faculty teaching the classes is a serious concern in
light of the upcoming HLC review.
First Year Academic Advising: The assessment of advising through the College of Business and
Academic Advising can serve as a model for other areas. After they have had an opportunity to
use their results they might be encouraged to share their process with other areas. The new
approaches along with other survey data can serve as a good basis for advising assessment.
Personalized and Engaged Learning: It seems one of the critical points in this discussion is the
need for an institutional definition of engaged learning. It is difficult to assess if you are doing
something if it isn’t defined. NSSE provides good evidence but is focused on learning within the
classroom. It seems like your statement is broader.
PI 9.3
The discrepancy in the survey data between not being influenced by information about
students and perceiving the institution as at least moderately assessing and disseminating
relevant information is curious. The overall pattern is similar to that at other institutions, but
UNI’s responses are more negative regarding the influence of the information.
PI 9.4
This is pretty straightforward.
Opportunities and Challenges
The second statement is unclear to me, there may be something missing. If the process leads to
more faculty/staff interest in the first year experience it has had a positive impact.
Moving into a culture of continuous assessment and improvement is an important shift for the
institution and one that is expected by HLC among other external constituents.
Recommendations
Orientation: The recommendations are clear and follow from the narrative. It wasn’t clear to
me why the first one would be high cost, unless you have expensive external assessments in
mind as the other measures.
Residence Life: This extensive list of recommendations is supported by the narrative. It also
adds some excellent ideas; i.e., using springboard houses for focus groups to focus on new
student responses, utilizing the existing program participation data, examining the timing and
content of the surveys to reduce over-surveying. I hope that your Residence Administration
representative was part of this discussion.
Liberal Arts Core: I see 1 and 2 as very important recommendations. The involvement of faculty
teaching the courses is an essential part of the success of both.
Advising: Coordination of efforts, periodic reviews, administrative support and dissemination of
results and recommendations are all desirable when there are multiple offices working with a
program. The coordination committee needs representation from the diverse offices and a
focus on the common goals, so that programs can still meet and assess their program specific
goals.
Personalized and Engaged Learning: The recommendations directly related to personalized and
engaged learning generally follow from your previous narrative. While, there wasn’t mention of
the move to more survey based LAC courses in the narrative other dimension committees have
raised this as an issue. While programs in the Academic Learning Center were mentioned, I
wasn’t clear on the basis of recommendation #6. Two of the seven recommendations here, #2
and #4 would seem to be more general and might be placed in an overall category.
While the recommendations seem grounded and appropriate, it seems possible that the tone
and specific details of some of the items could provoke reactance that would block acceptance
of the desirable actions. I don’t know the campus political context, but would recommend
reviewing the recommendations to make sure that the concepts can be considered with raising
unnecessary resistance. Change always raises some resistance, but you want to avoid
inadvertently increasing it.