In addition to the standard static reports on our website OIRA has been working over the last year to include interactive reports that our users can customize and utilize to answer additional data questions they may have.Ìý

Visit our public interactive data page to interact with dashboards on:Ìý

• Undergraduate and Graduate Admissions:Ìý Includes filters for residency and sex, and admit type (first-time and transfer) for undergraduate students and degree for graduate students.
• Enrollment:Ìý Includes filters for residency, sex, class level, and major. Undergraduate majors also include a filter for Honor’s College students.Ìý
• Retention and Graduation: Includes filters for residency, sex, college, first-term major type (i.e., declared vs. undeclared, STEM vs. non-STEM).

These interactive dashboards are a work in progress. If you have ideas of additional data or filters you would like to see, either on these public pages or in our forthcoming internal dashboards, please contact Lisa Applegate (lisa.applegate@maine.edu).Ìý

Also available is an institution-wide 3-Year At-A-Glance Snapshot including metrics for:Ìý

• Headcount
• FTE
• Student Credit Hours
• Expenditures
• Degrees Conferred

The post Interactive Data Dashboards Updated for Fall 2020 appeared first on Office of Institutional Research and Assessment.

Our annual unrequited love report has been updated for fall 2020 using data from the National Student Clearinghouse. This report provides insight into where 91¸£Àû’s admitted, but non-matriculated undergraduate students enroll. This year’s report examines enrollment patterns for the 9,682 first-time students who enrolled elsewhere.Ìý We also disaggregate the findings by residency (i.e., Maine residents vs. nonresidents).

New England Land Grant institutions, University of Southern Maine, and Husson University remain the top choices for 91¸£Àû’s admitted, non-matriculated students. Check out the report link for full results.

Fall 2020 vs. Fall 2019

Given the COVID-19 pandemic, and its likely impact on students’ choices, we compared fall 2020 with fall 2019 on some key statistics: the percentage of non-yielded applicants who are attending (a) another college (per the National Student Clearinghouse), (b) a community college, (c) a public institution, (d) an institution outside of their home state.Ìý Some key highlights of the findings are:

• ÌýCompared to fall 2019, the percentage of admitted, non-matriculated undergraduate applicants who chose to attend another institution decreased by 3 percentage points in fall 2020 (85% in fall 2020, 88% in fall 2019).
• ÌýOf those students who did matriculate elsewhere in fall 2020, the percentage of students who chose to matriculate to a community college increased from 5.4% in fall 2019 to 7.6% in fall 2020.
• We also saw an increase in the percentage of nonyields who chose to matriculate to a public institution (62.2% in fall 2020, 61.0% in fall 2019) and a slight decrease in students leaving their home state for college (48.6% in fall 2020, 50.2% in fall 2019).
  • This decrease was more pronounced in Maine residents, where we saw a 3.5 percentage-point increase in the percentage of Maine students staying in Maine for college (58.5% in fall 2020, 55.0% in fall 2019).

A list of destination schools for all 91¸£Àû’s admitted-but-nonmatriculating applicants is available upon request, as are lists for particular 91¸£Àû colleges, academic units, and majors. Please contact Lisa Applegate (lisa.applegate@maine.edu) for more information.

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91¸£Àû Department of Residence Life performs various types of indirect assessments throughout each academic year targeting different groups of students to better understand students’ feelings and opinions of living on campus. Indeed, the department has a subcommittee dedicated specifically to planning assessment projects. In the past, the department has focused on Living-Learning Communities (LLCs) and Themed Communities, curriculum programs, and GPA tracking for retention purposes. Beginning in September, Residence Life sent out a survey to students in all buildings to learn the topics they would most like support in as a student on campus, and what they feel most confident about as an undergraduate student. The department uses the results from such surveys toÌý establish curriculum programs aimed to better support students throughout their upcoming semester (from programs on class registration or how to apply to graduation to internships and career service resources).Ìý

More specific assessment projects focused on particular communities are also common. For example, when the Global Neighborhood LLC was disbanded because Knox Hall had to be closed for fall 2020, assessments were performed to identify how to create a semi-virtual, semi in-person community where the students would still feel connected. Currently, the Residence Life Department is working on an assessment project of all the LLCs to better understand what is most successful and appreciated by the students, and what could feasibly be improved via suggestions by students for next semester. Since some of the LLCs are more academic-based (Explorations, School of Nursing, Engineering, etc.) while others are more lifestyle-oriented (Green Living, Outdoor Living, etc.), students’ personal viewpoints are essentials they will help the Residence Life Staff plan not only for the upcoming semester but future years to come.Ìý

Establishing an assessment project can take time, however once formulated the benefits will be seen continuously. These projects are helpful, not only for improving students’ residential experiences, but also in meeting the Department’s overall mission to create a welcoming living environment for all students.

The post Assessment in the Residence Life Department: A Common Occurrence appeared first on Office of Institutional Research and Assessment.

An overview of the new process is provided in the figure above. It starts with submission of the 3-Year Assessment Summary Reports by each department at the end of June. OIRA staff review the reports over the summer using the rubric. In the fall, the AAB conducts a similar review using the same rubric, with guidance from OIRA staff. Consensus between the OIRA review and AAB review is achieved through discussion and the rubric feedback is provided to the program.Ìý

Our new feedback process was presented at the 2020 NECHE Conference this month, in the form of a virtual poster (a short video presentation). You can view our presentation by clicking on the image below:

Our hope is this new feedback process will result in improved program assessment processes and bolster the culture of assessment on campus.

Reference:

Fulcher, K., Smith, K., Sanchez, E., & Sanders, C. (2017). Needle in a Haystack: Finding Learning Improvement in Assessment Reports. AIR Professional File, (Summer 2017), 19–33.

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