Our last system-wide workshop in fall 2023 focused on aligning assessment activities to program learning outcomes. Good alignment is an important foundation for being able to interpret and use assessment results. If you couldn’t make the past workshop,

Interpreting results from assessing student learning is a key strategy that supports reflecting on evidence from assessment, making recommendations, and using assessment results to improve courses and programs. These steps are part of a complete assessment cycle, as shown in the diagram below.

Hope to see you at the system-wide workshop next fall! Details to be provided by September.

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In our second year of the First Destination project, collecting information from 2022-2023 graduates, the University of Maine System achieved a 53% knowledge rate (the percentage of the graduating cohort for whom we have data), an increase of 8.6% from the first year. This information about recent graduates is valuable for a wide range of stakeholders including institutional research, career centers, alumni and development offices, and chief academic officers. Summaries of recent graduates’ outcomes, as well as responses to survey items about careers services and other university programs, are available in a Power BI dashboard and in one-page infographics for each campus.  The one-page infographic reports for 91���� and 91���� Machias are here: 

• 91����
• 91���� Machias

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Ten faculty and staff members from 91���� and 91���� Machias have actively participated in monthly in-person sessions. These sessions have facilitated discussions on the strengths and weaknesses pertaining to data literacy and data-informed decision-making within the university. Additionally, participants have started collaborating on group projects focused on two critical aspects of student success and retention: evaluating the performance of students entering 91���� who had graduated from high school with high GPAs, and analyzing the relationship between retention rates and student engagement levels, as measured by the National Survey of Student Engagement.

The year-long program is set to conclude in December, culminating in the presentation of final projects. This initiative has proven to be a valuable opportunity for OIRA to engage in collaborative efforts with faculty and staff, fostering a culture of informed decision-making through engaging discussions and shared insights.

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�����鴡’s Report Index provides a complete inventory of public static reports. We recently redesigned the Report Index to be more efficient and easily navigable, featuring dropdown menus organized by report topic. Categories include admissions, enrollment, retention and graduation, the First Destination Survey, student evaluations of teaching, and more. Our Common Data Set and IPEDS report archives can also be found here.

Accessibility Improvements

Over the past year OIRA has updated our website to be more accessible. This has included revising our online reports to provide accessible formats, providing alternate text for photos and graphics, ensuring a high contrast between background and text, as well as changing all of our links to use identifying language. Our intent is for all areas of our website to be fully accessible and meet the , not only for those with disabilities or sensory impairments, but for all users that access our site.

New Assessment Pages: Portfolios, Student Voice, Rubrics

Our assessment website has been redesigned (thanks to Graduate Assistant Kaitlyn Groh!) and we have added new resource pages. The new pages include a set of resources and are linked below with short descriptions:

Portfolios for Assessment

Portfolios can be a valuable way for programs without a core curriculum (for instance, individualized or interdisciplinary programs) to assess program learning outcomes. They are also a great way to bring students in as active participants in the assessment process, as well as give them the opportunity to reflect on their learning.

Student Voice

Incorporating student voice into the assessment process is a powerful way to gather important feedback from students’ perspectives to support improvements to the program and assessment process. It can also be valuable for students to be aware of their program learning outcomes and to learn about how those outcomes are assessed.

Building and Using Rubrics in Assessment

Rubrics can be a useful tool to use when identifying levels of learning and achievement, specifically when you align a rubric with your program learning outcomes. Included in this page are example rubrics from other universities with a short discussion on strengths and weaknesses of each one, and how you might implement them in your program.

Report Updates

Non-Yield Reports

Our First-Time Undergraduate and Transfer Undergraduate Non-Yield Reports have been updated for Fall 2023. These reports provide information about where 91����’s admitted but non-matriculated students decided to attend college.

SET Response Rates

Student Evaluations of Teaching (SET) Response Rate Reports have been updated for Fall 2023 for both 91���� and UMM. We have started providing reports in both PDF and a fully accessible Excel format.

Veterans Report

The 91���� Degree-Seeking Veterans Report was recently updated to include data for Fall 2023 and Spring 2024. This report depicts longitudinal trends in the degree-seeking veteran population at 91����, and contains term enrollment data going back to Fall 2009.

KPI Updates

91���� uses Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to annually evaluate its long-term goal progress in a number of topic areas originating from its strategic plans. These metrics are laid out on the KPI page of our website, most of which have been updated for the current year. We also recently reorganized this page to display KPI metrics for 91���� and 91���� Machias in a more clear and succinct manner.

Retention and Graduation Rates

Our reports on Retention and Graduation Rates have been updated to include the Fall 2022 Cohort. Total retention and graduation rates for 91���� and 91���� Machias are available to view, as well as rates by academic college.

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Through the fall and spring, OIRA analyzed data from early alert campaigns and generated a series of infographics to keep Associate Provost Marzilli and the success teams informed about the impacts of the campaigns. Early analysis was used by Provost Marzilli to make adjustments, including adjusting the timing for the spring campaign and calling on success teams to make extra efforts to reach out to a group of students with alerts from multiple campaigns.

After the fall term, data analysis was completed to investigate academic outcomes for first-year students, with promising results. Overall, fall term GPA for the 2023 first-year full-time cohort was 3% higher than fall term GPA in 2021 or 2022, after adjusting for differences in pre-enrollment factors including high school GPA and percentage of students with one or more of the following characteristics (which we have labeled “barriers to success” due to their statistical correlation with less-favorable academic outcomes in prior cohorts): high school GPA below 3.0, first-generation, Pell eligible, underrepresented minority, and rural. Fall 2023 term GPA was 6% higher than fall 2021 or 2022 for students with two or more barriers to success. (Note: The statistical analyses are correlational in nature and cannot be interpreted as demonstrating a causal relationship between the success efforts and these outcomes.)

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Since the end of the fall semester, the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment has been examining the associations between students in classes receiving these new interventions and their final grades, as well as summarizing and analyzing the results of surveys and other assessments. While it will take a few more semesters of data before we can evaluate most projects, we are meeting with Gateways to Success leads for all campuses and projects to start exploring preliminary data.

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• All academic programs in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Honors College at 91����
• All academic programs in the Creative Arts and Professional Studies Division at 91���� Machias.

The 3-year reports consist of:

1.) A and

2.) Updated learning outcomes data for all program learning outcomes in the annual reporting site.  As always, our assessment staff is ready and available to meet with you to answer any questions you may have about program assessment and the reporting process. Please submit a 3-year report even if it feels incomplete because there is not data for all program learning outcomes. It is important to us to meet programs where they are in this process, and the information in the 3-year reports helps us identify areas where support may be needed.

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In addition to meeting one-on-one with many programs, since September OIRA has offered four roundtable discussions (two for MCEC faculty, one for LAS faculty, and one for COEHD faculty) and two workshops focused on rubric development for program assessment. A roundtable with ELH faculty was held last academic year in May 2023. These events were attended by 31 graduate faculty and 2 associate deans, with some faculty attending both a roundtable discussion and one of the rubric workshops.

CLAS and interdisciplinary graduate programs are scheduled to submit their first 3-year assessment reflection reports by June 30, and we have scheduled reporting info. sessions April 18 (11-12:00) and May 6 (1-2:00) to support this effort (contact laura.millay@maine.edu if you are interested in attending). OIRA and the Assessment Advisory Board will review submitted plans and provide formative feedback. Programs are also encouraged to reach out to OIRA staff any time with questions or to request a meeting.

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