📋 Overview

Welcome to the documentation supporting the Assessment Compliance Report at USF!

The Report is designed to provide Deans and other institutional leaders with one-stop information on the level to which academic programs (Majors and Certificates)* provide required annual assessment reporting and planning following commonly accepted good practice in higher education and aligned with the expectations of USF’s current institutional accreditor, the Southern Association of Colleges and Universities Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC). Compliance with the requirements of these external stakeholders is assigned via a series of rubrics detailing the USF Assessment Standards (page 8), designed by the Office of Decision Support - Institutional Effectiveness (ODS-IE).

Every year, each program submits an Assessment Report for the previous year and an Assessment Plan for the upcoming year. Once Plans/Reports are submitted, ODS-IE reviews them according to the Assessment Standards and affiliated Rubrics, and assigns a rating, and provides specific feedback based on the rating. ODS-IE then works with the program to complete edits as needed based on rating; not all programs achieve the highest rating. Programs that struggle to achieve the highest rating might benefit from additional faculty development resources in the area of assessment.

*At minimum, academic programs included in the assessment reporting and planning requirements are those identified on USF’s Institutional Summary Form provided to SACSCOC upon reaffirmation. Additional assessments may be tracked based on recommendations and requests from program faculty.

1. Approved (2022 and beyond), Compliant (2017-2021), Developed and Highly Developed (2016-2017): All elements of the Plan/Report meet the USF Assessment Standards

2. Non-Compliant 1: Minor revisions would be required to bring the document into compliance. These often include but are not limited to: including the total number of students assessed, ensuring that some form of inter-rater agreement data is collected or planned to be collected for assessment methods with a subjective scale (such as a scoring rubric for a project), and not including specific action items resulting from the use of the assessment results.

3. Non-Complaint 2: Components are missing from the document.

4. On Hold: There are no students available, or, there is another reason that has provided an approved delay in submission.

Programs in the College of Engineering and most of the programs in the College of Behavioral & Community Sciences complete these reports based on calendar years (January 1st - December 31st), while all others (e.g., College of Arts and Sciences, Taneja College of Pharmacy) complete them based on academic years, with preceding summer terms included. The alignment of colleges with years included in assessment plans/reports can be found in the table:

📖 Report Pages

Welcome Page: This page briefly describes the content of the Dashboard. There are no filters enabled on this page.

Majors: This page contains information related to the compliance of assessment submissions from the 2021 Report and 2022 Plan for the academic majors of USF. The page can be filtered by College to provide additional detail. By hovering over the “slice” of the pie charts that are of interest, specific numbers of programs will be shown. The total number of Majors listed will be the same for the 2021 Assessment Reports and 2022 Assessment Plans, and any programs that have been or were in the process of termination during that period will be indicated with the “On Hold” designation. To see the specific programs rated as “Non-Compliant 1,” “Non-Compliant 2,” and “On Hold,” see the “Non Compliance List” page.

Certificates: This page contains information related to the compliance of assessment submissions from the 2021 Report and 2022 Plan for the credit-bearing graduate and undergraduate certificates of USF. The page can be filtered by College to provide additional detail. By hovering over the “slice” of the pie charts that are of interest, specific numbers of programs will be shown. The total number of Certificates listed will be the same for the 2021 Assessment Reports and 2022 Assessment Plans, and any programs that have been or were in the process of termination during that period will be indicated with the “On Hold” designation. Another common reason that the “On Hold” designation is applied is that there are no students enrolled in the certificate or the specific component of the certificate (i.e., course) that is being assessed. If this is a frequent occurrence, it is often recommended to the program to assess achievement of a learning outcome in a course, despite certificate-enrolled students, to support that if a student does complete the course, the extent to which they will have achieved the learning outcomes. To see the specific programs rated as “Non-Compliant 1,” “Non-Compliant 2,” and “On Hold,” see the “Non Compliance List” page.

Non Compliance List: This page contains lists of all programs assigned the Non-Compliant 1, Non-Compliant 2, or On Hold ratings for the Assessment Reports or Assessment Plans. It is important to note that these programs might be struggling with enrollment, so resourcing recruitment might be a valuable addition for allowing USF to continue offering the program to its students.

Longitudinal: This page contains an overview of assessment compliance from the 2017-2018 academic year (for academic year colleges)/calendar year 2018 (for calendar year colleges) to the current year. The proportion of Compliance to Non-Compliance over time is a valuable tool to help identify the extent to which faculty have been able to produce assessment materials.

📊 Glossary: Definitions

📎 Additional Resources