IE Discussion Guide and Common Meeting Notes Templates

One of the most critical ways we demonstrate our educational quality assurance and compliance with accreditation standards is through the collection of evidence. Appendix F of the 2020 NWCCU Accreditation Handbook provides detailed information about the nature of evidence and how it is used in the accreditation process. The appendix also provides this one-sentence description of evidence:

"In essence, evidence includes data and facts, a descriptive narrative of accomplishments, achievement, and outcomes, along with the careful analysis of information, which are used to promote continuous improvement." --NWCCU 2020

IE Discussion Guide

The UCC Institutional Effectiveness Discussion Guide provides information to help you incorporate institutional effectiveness topics into your recurring meetings. It includes a listing of the specific accreditation standards surrounding IE, an IE topic list, and a suggested frequency of discussion for each topic. The guide also includes a glossary of institutional effectiveness terms and contact information for campus IE staff.

Common Meeting Notes Templates

To assist campus offices with the collection of evidence, the Institutional Effectiveness committee has created two templates which provide the following features and benefits:

• A framework to use as a guide when preparing the agenda for your committee, program, or department/staff meetings
• A standardized form for capturing notes during the meetings
• A reminder to include a standing agenda item to discuss institutional effectiveness or NWCCU accreditation topics during your meetings
• A link to UCC's institutional effectiveness rubric - by which we assess our overall institutional effectiveness capabilities
• A standardized form to reduce the work required to compile evidence needed for UCC's cyclic accreditation reporting

Template A is intended to help you create an agenda for a single meeting and help you capture evidence of any institutional effectiveness topics discussed during the meeting.

Template B may also be used to plan a single meeting, but the additional level of detail it provides makes it a useful tool to use throughout the year to capture progress on your operational and tactical plan goals. When the time comes to complete your operational or tactical plan assessment reports, the data you've collected on these templates will simplify the process.

Each template also includes a link to our IE rubric. This is the rubric UCC uses to assess our level of implementation of IE processes. More information about the rubric, along with the rubric showing our current assessment levels can be found on the IE Assessment webpage.