Higher education has made impressive progress concerning student learning outcomes assessment practices. Yet--despite the assumption that better assessment would lead to better student learning--few examples of demonstrable student learning improvement exist at the academic degree or university levels. In 2014 Fulcher, Good, Coleman, and Smith…

The phrase "data-driven" has been used with increasing frequency in the college access and success field in recent years. However, as with many frequently used phrases, its importance can get lost or written off as a buzzword. Being data-driven revolves around decisions being shaped by information and evidence rather than hunches, gut…

Describes steps in a process-improvement project for reserve book services at the University of Arizona Library: (1) plan--identify process boundaries and customer requirements, gather/analyze data, prioritize problems; (2) do--encourage divergent thinking, reach convergent thinking, find solutions; (3) check--pilot solutions, compare costs; and…

Business process redesign (BPR) is a multifunctional, interdisciplinary, and strategic business improvement methodology designed to improve service, costs, and quality. This book provides a conceptual framework for institutions of higher education to shape such an improvement effort including examples of BPR activities and tools. Chapter 1…

Factors that affect the utility of financial data collected through the Higher Education General Information Surveys (HEGIS) are examined. Attention is also directed to the process associated with the collection and use of that data; roles and responsibilities of various parties to that process, with a focus on researchers' roles; and possible…

Higher education experts tout learning outcomes assessment as a vehicle for program improvement. To this end the authors share a rubric designed explicitly to evaluate the quality of assessment and how it leads to program improvement. The rubric contains six general assessment areas, which are further broken down into 14 elements. Embedded within…

A program implemented in the University System of Georgia to assist women and minorities advance in educational research is described. The program is one of individually guided research and each participant is free to select individual objectives, topics, research procedures, rate of progress, and outcomes. Program participants are predominantly…

Public policy issues relating to federal assistance to colleges struggling to survive in the 1980s are addressed. Special challenges to postsecondary education result from declining enrollments, inflationary cost spirals, and lack of public confidence in education. Questions are raised in regard to the following five public policy alternatives,…

In the past three years, Board of Governors' (BOG) staff, working in cooperation with university representatives, have continued to improve the data collection and reporting capabilities for the State University System. Simultaneously, Board staff have worked to lessen the reporting burden on the universities by reducing the number of data…

This chapter is limited to a discussion of formative evaluation procedures for the purpose of improving instructional programs. It provides some discussion about what formative evaluation is, what it is for, and some guidelines regarding how to go about the evaluation of instruction. The use of the term "instruction" is construed very broadly to…

Examines knowledge level, relevance, and current use level of quality improvement practices in Wisconsin-supported employment agencies among administrators and service providers. Respondents expressed low-to-moderate level of need for training in areas of critical ingredients of quality improvement, evaluation and team performance, and defining…

The Academic Libraries Survey (ALS) was established in 1966 to collect concise information on library resources, services, and expenditures for the entire population of academic libraries in the United States. The ALS is conducted every 2 years as a cooperative venture of the U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Commerce, Bureau of…

This document contains conference papers, other speeches, and supplementary material from the first International Conference on Total Quality Management (TQM) and Academic Libraries, held in 1994. The conference was comprised of four sessions, and the introductory remarks of each are included, along with transcriptions of each session's…

A project was undertaken to develop and field-test new methodologies for collecting follow-up and placement data on completers of Miami-Dade Community College (MDCC). Strategies used in the study included exploration of such nontraditional data sources as in- and out-of-state private university transfers, state university system tapes for all…

A panel discussion was held on the Student Information System (SIS) established at Ohio State University. The SIS was designed to: (1) document student experiences; (2) diagnose student progress in programs in order to fulfill general student advising and counseling functions; (3) collect data on students and programs for evaluation purposes; and…