Have you ever been asked to provide feedback or fill out a survey based on food, service, a product, etc. that you purchased or experienced? This feedback is critical to determining how effective a product or service is, and if you—the customer—liked what you experienced.
“The very essence of any company, organization, association or entity that provides any type of product or service is how effectively they provide that product or service and whether or not it meets the expectations of customers,” explains NCU Director of Assessment Greg Hickman.
Educational institutions, like any other company or organization, are no different in that they want to ensure that their product is positively meeting expectations.
“Let’s face it, consumers have many options to choose from when it comes to higher education,” comments Hickman. “Like any other product, if a school is not meeting students’ expectations, they will simply look elsewhere and obtain an educational product that does meet their needs.”
At NCU, determining whether or not our student experience, degree programs, services, and delivery methods are meeting our students’ (customers') expectations is achieved through a process known as assessment.
When it comes to our programs, for example, assessment includes analyzing individual competencies and program and course objectives. It also requires us to clearly state learning outcomes and to measure how well we meet those outcomes. Therefore, we need to be able to assess where we currently are, what’s working, what’s not, and what changes need to be made in order to help us get to where we need to be to make these outcomes a reality.
The same is true of NCU as a whole when it comes to fulfilling our Mission. In essence, we want to help our students accomplish their educational goals by providing a quality education experience, and we want to do it in a way that is manageable for them and their professional lifestyles no matter where they are in the world. The only way to ensure we are meeting these expectations and goals is through assessment.
“Knowing that consumers drive the market, Northcentral University has great interest in assessing the product that we provide our students,” notes Hickman. “We continue to assess the effectiveness of our institution in terms of retention rates, graduation rates, and student satisfaction to name a few, so that we gain an understanding of our strengths and weaknesses, and more importantly, how we can modify or improve our product.”
In addition to ensuring that we are fulfilling our mission at NCU, regular assessment is also key to meeting accreditation criteria set by the Higher Learning Commission. These criteria include:
Thankfully, the fact that assessment is so engrained in the everyday culture here at NCU means we’re better prepared for our HLC Comprehensive Visit in October!