Aligning Goals and Outcomes with ACCJC Accreditation Requirements

The following document contains three forms which can be used to align unit goals and outcomes with ACCJC Eligibility Requirements and Accreditation Standards. They also identify the existing sources of information and bodies of evidence generated by on-going assessment and evaluation processes which support the requirements and standards. The forms can be useful in preparing for an institutional self-study for initial accreditation or reaffirmation. They were created by adding accreditation columns to variations of the goal alignment matrix and the "five-column model" form commonly used in assessment efforts by colleges across the ACCJC region. To test the forms, download the Word DOC version instead of the PDF version.

TFR Forms ACCJC Accreditation Assessment TVT2010-01-05

Visualizing Research, Planning, and Assessment Processes

The following research guide is an image anthology of over 600 visualizations created and/or used by ACCJC accredited colleges for employee training and to communicate research, planning, and assessment initiatives, processes, and structures to their employees, students, communities, and accreditor. The images were collected via the college's public websites throughout 2009 and together form a snapshot of the visualization techniques used by the colleges to aid in their transition to and understanding of the "new" model for higher education practice inherent within the 2002 ACCJC Standards of Accreditation. The images in this anthology are summary outcomes from the thousands of manhours invested by the original creators of these communication tools and the plans, processes, and structures they represent. They were collected to form a resource which can help us in the creation and revision of our own research, planning, assessment, and communication efforts.


TFR Guides Visualizing Research Planning Assessment Process, 2009-12-16 TVT

Institutional Quality and Accreditation

The following presentation gives an introduction to regional accreditation in the United States, the Accrediting Commission of Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), and the purposes of accreditation. It also gives an overview of the ACCJC accreditation process, the 2002 Accreditation Standards, and the reliance on evidence in accreditation. It is based on an ACCJC workshop by Dr. Deborah G. Blue and Mr. G. Jack Pond from 2006. Workshop participants were told the presentations would be posted online for download and could be used for in-house training. Unfortunately, for one reason or another, this did not happen. Rachel Mason and I reproduced and adapted the original presentations for staff training sessions on accreditation and continuous quality improvement in 2007. This version is a revision of the 2007 adaptation. Some material has been deleted, some has been revised, updated and/or expanded, and about a third of the pages are new to this version. The additional material includes a new map of the U.S. accreditation regions, and charts of possible ACCJC actions, the ACCJC 6-year accreditation cycle, and a simplified version of the evidence-based integrated planning and assessment cycle required by the 2002 Standards.

TFR InstitutionQuality&Accreditation ACCJC2006 TVT2009

This presentation is posted as per the original intentions of Dr. Blue and Mr. Pond, if you find material in it useful please include a citation to their original workshop in addition to this post. The map and charts were created by Todd V. Titterud for The Follow-Up Report and can be cited separately.

October 2009 Accreditation Reports

The Action Letters and Reports page of The Follow-Up Report has been updated to include links to October 2009 accreditation reports. The page now includes links to thirteen 2009 Institutional Self-Studies and an additional eighteen October 2009 reports from the community colleges in the ACCJC region.

Also, the first draft of a new page with links to the Research, Planning, and Assessment web pages and related documents from the colleges has finally been completed and will be added to the site when the second draft is finished.

Themes in the Accreditation Standards

The following is a presentation of the six themes in the 2002 ACCJC accreditation standards from the Guide to Evaluating Institutions. Additional comments and nineteen original charts or illustrations have been added to the presentation to help clarify the themes.

TFR Accreditation Standards SixThemes(3) 2009-08-18TVT

Visualizing the Standards: More Wordles

I've created a variety of different wordles (mostly Wordle Word Clouds) from the text of the 2002 ACCJC Accreditation Standards and posted them on Picassa. You can click on the header or on the slide show itself to go to the Picassa album and download individual images for you own use or you can go to the standards data set on Many Eyes to create your own visualizations to liven up a report or presentation.

Standards Wordles on Picassa:

Visualizing the Standards: Interactive Wordles

I've also posted the following Wordle on the Many Eyes website based on the text of the 2002 standards. The Wordle algorithm uses the freqency of a term to determine the relative size of a word as in other tag clouds but it also enables the placement of smaller words in the spaces between and within letters of the larger words. The results are much more varied than standard tag clouds and can create typographic images which remind me of Dadaism in the late 1910s and early 1920s, Futurism in the 1920s and 1930s, California alternative publications in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the work of David Carson in the 1990s. Although Wordle was designed to be a playful image generator (often refered to as a "toy") rather than an analytical technique, it is frequently used as a visual communication tool. The following Wordle was selected because the image reminds me of the thought bubbles in a cartoon and implies an institution thinking about the themes of the standards. The size, placement, and coloring of the terms can also suggest some of the thoughts of an institution "under" the standards ("institutional learning services student," "services support mission," "board provides planning," "planning outcomes effective," etc.).

Thoughtful Institution Wordle:

Visualizing the Standards: Interactive Word Trees

You can now create word trees of the ACCJC Accreditation Standards through IBM's Many Eyes website using the uploaded version of the standards I created with the numbering system removed. " A word tree is a visual search tool for unstructured text, such as a book, article, speech or poem. It lets you pick a word or phrase and shows you all the different contexts in which it appears. The contexts are arranged in a tree-like branching structure to reveal recurrent themes and phrases." (Many Eyes Word Tree Guide) The heading above the word tree includes a link to the saved tree based on the word "student". With IBM's interactive word trees you can click on a term to collapse branches into phrases (such as "student learning" or student learning outcomes"). You can create your own word trees from the standards by typing any word or phrase into the search box and hitting enter on your keyboard. You can also create other visualizations (Tag Clouds, Wordles, or Phrase Nets) from the standards by going to the data set page and clicking the visualize ikon. (Note: You may need to update the Java version on your computer to view or create interactive word trees or other visualizations.)

Student Word Tree:

Visualizing the Standards: Interactive Tag Clouds

Tag Clouds are a popular Web 2.0 visualization technique for the informal content analysis of texts and websites. They're frequently used by bloggers who want a more visually interesting index of their site. I've uploaded the text of the 2002 ACCJC Accreditation Standards to IBM's Many Eyes web site (http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/) and created the following sample tag cloud of the 200 most frequent terms in the standards. Move your cursor over a term to see its frequency in the standards and sample contexts. (Note: You may need to update the Java version on your computer to view this interactive tag cloud)

One Word Tag Cloud:

ACCJC Requirements for Institutional Mission Statements and Learning Outcomes

This presentation gives an overview of the ACCJC requirements regarding institutional mission statements and institutional learning outcomes. It is designed to be a reference aid or guide for groups tasked to assess their college mission or outcomes as part of a regular review or institutional self-study. The applicable sections of the 2004 Eligibility Requirements and the 2002 Accreditation Standards cited in the presentation are appended for easy reference.

Comparison of the current requirements to the current presentations of institutional missions and outcomes by ACCJC accredited colleges reveals a wide range in the apparent degree of understanding, application, and interpretation of these requirements. It appears many colleges in the region need to review and revise the wording or presentation of their institutional mission and outcomes statements to ensure or clarify that they meet current ACCJC requirements.

Links to the current institutional mission and outcomes statements of colleges in the ACCJC region can be found at:

https://sites.google.com/site/thefollowupreport/Home/institutional-mission-and-learning-outcomes

TFR_InstitutionalMissionILOs_2009-06-09_TVT

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Other Research assessment accreditation standa

Institutional Mission and Learning Outcomes

The Institutional Mission and Learning Outcomes page of The Follow-Up Report gives an overview of the college-level mission and outcomes requirements of the 2002 Accreditation Standards and the 2004 Eligibility Requirements of the ACCJC. Wherever possible it includes links to college vision, mission, values, and philosophy statements; general education philosophy statements and outcomes (goals, objectives and/or GE SLOs); and institutional-level Student Learning Outcomes (Institutional SLOs, ILOs, Core Competencies, Degree-Level Outcomes, Etc.) from the college websites and/or a recent catalog.

Sanction Letter Recommendations

The Sanction Letter Recommendations page of The Follow-Up Report summarizes the findings of a simple content analysis of ACCJC sanction (Warning, Probation, and Show Cause) letters. It shows which Standards were the most cited in the recommendations for colleges placed on a sanction and identifies the key words and phrases used in the Commission recommendations for sanctioned colleges.

Introducing The Follow-Up Report

Welcome to The Follow-Up Report Press blog. This is the "pressroom" and publications companion site to The Follow-Up Report website created in May 2009.

The Follow-Up Report (https://sites.google.com/site/thefollowupreport/) was created by Todd V. Titterud to share information with friends and colleagues in ACCJC accredited colleges. It is a follow-up on the implementation of the 2002 Standards and the strengthened enforcement of the two-year rule. It was created as a resource to help colleagues understand current trends in Commission actions and to succeed in their own efforts to achieve continuous institutional learning and improvement.

The blog will post overviews of The Follow-Up Report (TFR) pages and updates; TFR publications; and links to and/or reviews/overviews of related websites and online publications.