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Spangehl
August 02, 2006, 11:23 AM
AQIP intends to establish and follow a rigorous procedure in evaluating the Quality Checkup visits, beginning with its first full year visits in 2006-07. We need your help to design the evaluations we need. When these visits begin, in September 2006, we want to have a system in place that allows every team member and as many members of the institution as possible to go online and complete an evaluation that can be summarized and reported back quickly and accurately to the institution, to the team members, and to AQIP.

Our goals for a Quality Checkup evaluation process must include:

1. Providing AQIP with actionable information that will help it make future Quality Checkup visits (a) more educational, enjoyable, and rewarding, both for institutions and for team members; (b) more cost-efficient and more robust (less likely to fail to achieve their objectives); and (c) better aligned with institutional needs, schedules, and cultures.

2. Identifying specific practices and innovations that have made specific Quality Checkups successful, and encourage their use in future visits.

3. Providing site visit team members with feedback on how institutions perceived them and evaluated their performance in conducting the visit.

4. Providing institutions, and AQIP, with data on how faculty, staff, and other groups perceived and evaluated the visit, the team members, and the visit’s effect on the institution.

How well the visit met institutional and team member expectations is also important. So is the question of whether the visit produced beneficial lasting effects on the institution. Neither of these can be evaluated solely during or just at the end of the visit; they may require a pre- or post-visit component to the evaluation.

Since AQIP has preached consistently about the benefits of comparative data, we would like to follow our own advice and provide both individual and comparative feedback when we summarize evaluation results. For example, we want to tell team members not just how they were evaluated as individuals, but how their evaluations compared with the averages for all reviewers.

YOU can help us by replying to this thread with ideas and specific questions you think we should use in this evaluation process. In doing so, you can help ensure that the feedback you get and provide -- whether you're a team member or from an institution hosting a visit -- will serve you well.

pheineman
October 27, 2006, 12:28 PM
Having recently completed our Quality Checkup site visit let me share a few impressions.

The site visit team was extremely well-prepared. They had read in advance our revised Systems Portfolio, Federal Compliance Packet, Action Projects, College Catalog, Quality Program Summary and a 75-page document we had prepared in response to the Systems Appraisal Feedback Report. They were both very personable and pleasant to work with, knowledgeable and experienced faculty and administrators themselves who could quickly grasp even the most complex of systems. One of the team members was a reader for our original portfolio and provided insight into the Systems Appraisal Feedback Report and the changes we incorporated into our revised portfolio.

Having previously gone through three traditional HLC site visits at three different postsecondary institutions, the major difference from my perspective was that the Quality Checkup provided opportunities for true dialogue and inquiry. It turned out to be a mutually beneficial experience – not an inquisition.

The turnaround time for receiving the final Quality Checkup Report was amazing…we had ours the following week.

For those of you preparing for your site visit, if I can be of any assistance, please feel free to contact me at 402-557-7146 or at pheineman@bellevue.edu . But rest assured that if you are well prepared the Checkup site visit is painless and should be an experienced to be embraced and not feared.

Dr. Pete Heineman, Director
Quality Assurance Programs
Bellevue University