Establishing a Sustainable Process to Measure Learner Performance

Abstract

The quality of student learning and academic rigor is central to higher education. Nonetheless, colleges often prioritize metrics such as enrollment and graduation rates or use assessment data to solely fulfill accreditation requirements. The Academic Quality Assurance (AQA) team at a university ventured to expand the academic quality data landscape to learn more about student achievement. The paper shares the team’s journey to collect and report on student performance data for continuous improvement of academic programs. Specifically, this paper includes the methods to promote a culture of assessment by incorporating new concepts into the AQA process: Data visualization and storytelling with data. This paper includes the methodology to collect and report on data, samples of the systems and visualizations used, and the challenges faced in the context of people, process, and tools.