Main Content Area

Institutional Research

Assessment Program

Through its Assessment Program, the Institutional Research department collaborates, guides, and provides resources for intentional assessment practices to encourage a college-wide culture of evidence. Programs are defined as academic, administrative, service program, department or operational units.

The primary goal is to use data to strengthen the quality of all Aims programs, services, operations, and processes, ultimately enhancing student learning, development and success through curricular, co-curricular and operational assessments. 

Primary Functions

Facilitate, develop, articulate, and review program identity, which includes mission statements, primary functions and vision.

Curricular Assessment

curricular-assessment

Through assessment, the Institutional Research department helps improve the student experience, course experience, program experience and the Aims Community College experience.

Accomplished by finding if the student is improving, if the student is achieving learning outcomes and is learning as expected, how the student is engaging with instruction and finding the student’s strengths and weaknesses.

Course Evaluations

Towards the end of each semester students can provide feedback about their course experiences. Student feedback is one of the most powerful tools to improve the student experience at Aims Community College and every voice counts. The evaluation is anonymous. After final grades are posted, faculty receive feedback summaries of the reports without any individually identifiable information. 

Completing Evaluations

  • Each student will receive emails near the end of the semester with a link to EvaluationKIT, the third-party platform used to administer evaluations and collect evaluation data.
  • Evaluations can be completed outside of class by accessing the emailed link or via your D2L course shell.
  • Upon logging into EvaluationKit as a student, the page will show all of your course evaluations for the semester. This will include the dates that they are open, and whether or not they have been submitted yet.
    • Clicking on the hyperlinked title of each course will open the individual course evaluation.
    • Once you have completed your evaluation click “Submit” to finish.
  • For Full-Term Courses, Evaluations will be available starting 14 days before the end of the course, and will remain open until 3 days after the end of the course.
    • Courses that are shorter than the normal 17 day window will have an altered schedule dependent on the length of the course; however, students will still receive access to the survey via email and will be able to access their evaluations through their D2L course shell.
  • Students will receive a confirmation email or certificate once they complete the evaluation for each course.
     

Questions?
Read the FAQ document or contact the Institutional Research and Assessment office at courseeval@aims.edu.

Common Learning Outcomes

Students should be able to demonstrate a high level of written communication skills as necessary for their future professions through the development and expression of ideas in writing. Students with strong written communication skills will include in their writing a clear main idea or theme, include appropriate content and context, organize their materials to suit the purpose of the document, and use appropriate conventions.
 

View the Aims Written Communication Rubric

Assessment Resources

Academic Assessment Help

Judy Eaton
Functional Analyst I, Curriculum Development
Landon Loyd
Program Manager III, CTE

Academic Assessment Reports

Program Reports

Data from reports and surveys that pertain to program-level analysis, such as program-level enrollment, retention and completion information.   

Program Review Reports

Program Review is just one assessment tool used by programs as a way to set goals and measure progress towards these goals.

Program Review includes course completion and success rates, as well as the credit hours generated by courses attributed to the program. For programs with associated majors, it includes information about degrees and certificates awarded, number of students declared in associated degrees and certificates, retention rates and the contribution to total credit hours produced by Aims students declared in associated degrees and certificates. 

For career and technical programs, the information from the most recently available VE-135 is also included. The report contains all of the program review data beginning in 2005 and will be updated with new information each academic year.

College-Wide Program Retention Reports

The report of student retention behavior for four subsequent academic years for all students enrolled in the initial fall term and declared in a degree or certificate program. 

This includes all enrolled degree and certificate-seeking students regardless of progress toward award completion or prior academic experience. Students are grouped by their demographics, such as gender, race and ethnicity. Additional groupings include students’ Pell eligibility, full-time/part-time status, first-generation status, declared program department and remedial needs statuses as of the initial fall term.

Co-Curricular Assessment

Learning does not always happen in the classroom and co-curricular activities and experiences contribute to the entire Aims student experience. To understand the contribution to the overall student experience, Institutional Research assesses areas outside of the classroom. 

Co-curricular assessment is comprised of five levels:

  • Level 1 - Institution
  • Level 2 - Division
  • Level 3 - Department
  • Level 4 - Program
  • Level 5 - Events 

Community College Survey of Student Engagement

The Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) is a tool developed by the University of Texas at Austin that asks about institutional practices and student behaviors that are highly correlated with student learning and retention. 

CCSSE Privacy Statement

Operational Assessment

By identifying strengths and opportunities through comprehensive object review processes, Operational Assessment supports development and results in continuous improvement of services, processes, and performance.