This chapter discusses principles that support using data about teaching and learning and offers several strategies particularly well suited for use by institutional researchers at small colleges in helping faculty, staff, and administrators use data on student learning for improvement.

This chapter focuses on perspectives of external data reporting and their implications for institutional research offices and campuses as a whole. The authors examine a variety of uses for externally reported data and explore opportunities for using these data more fully across the institution.

The community college environment is complex and dynamic, requiring constant monitoring. To ensure that workforce education, a core component of community colleges' missions, remains aligned with colleges' environments, responsive to employers' needs, suited to students' interests and abilities, and current in content and technology, it is…

Institutional researchers are responsible for the collection, organization, analysis, and maintenance of large amounts of personally identifiable data on students, faculty, and staff. Not only are institutional research (IR) offices required to report these data to state and federal agencies, they are also responsible for providing information to…

Presents an approach increasingly employed by businesses to track and respond to their customers to provide better and faster services: customer relationship management. Discusses its applicability to the operations of higher education and institutional research and the role it plays in the knowledge management framework. (EV)

Organizational barriers to information use vary with types of decisions and the phases of information collection, analysis, and communication. Strategies suitable for one environment will not always work in others. (Author/MSE)

The use of student outcomes data in higher education is discussed. Consideration is given to a widely recognized taxonomy of student outcomes developed by Alexander Astin and his associates, and a classification of outcomes developed by Oscar Lenning and his associates at the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS). Issues…

This paper discusses the role that the Office of Institutional Research and Strategic Planning played in providing data support, planning, and cohesiveness as Utah Valley Community College worked to become Utah Valley State College. The two tier model adopted at Utah Valley State College aspires to describe a cost-effective four-year college with…

This is the first in an annual series of studies on the circulation of media and the operation of educational media centers in United States Public Schools. The plan is to gather three types of data in each annual survey: (1) baseline data gathered each year, (2) an in-depth probe of a particular part of media programs, and (3) a compilation of…

Successful implementation of assessment requires effective administrative leadership to get started, convert data to information, and use the information in making improvements. Assessment may pay its greatest long-term dividends as an organizational device for directing scarce reserves of institutional attention to teaching and learning. (MLW)

The evolution of college and university planning is examined through a review of theory and a case study of DePaul University (Illinois). The discussion focuses on the evolving role for institutional research in strategic decision making and the new skills and knowledge researchers need to support strategic planning more effectively. (MSE)

The National Science Foundation's Computer-Aided Science Policy and Research database system provides microcomputer-based access and manipulation of multiple national databases for federal and now institutional use. Applications at West Virginia University, Portland State University, and the State University of New York at Buffalo pilot tested the…

To increase the value of administrative information for universitywide decision making, the office of institutional research at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University has undertaken a project to standardize data elements and codes across all administrative systems and institutionalize an ongoing standardization process. (Author/MSE)

Rio Salado Community College (Arizona) uses Total Quality Management tools for four purposes: meeting facilitation; process definition; project selection; and data gathering and analysis. Implementation has helped clarify major issues and depersonalize problems, allowing the continuous improvement team or other group to move forward. (MSE)

The applicability and validity of NCHEMS' Information Exchange Procedures (IEP) to major research universities are examined. IEP enables peer institutions to compare information about their resources. Evaluation of the IEP costing methods are examined in this document, which is intended as an appendix to "Evaluation of the IEP Costing…