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Tips for Writing the Self-Study Report
1. Follow the Standards and related criteria to the letter. 2. Several faculty or administrators are likely to write sections of the report addressing areas of their responsibilities. Emphasize to these writers the importance of including documentation of each criterion. Now is the time to be DETAIL-ORIENTED. 3. Not only must you indicate that the school/program has met each criterion, but you must also briefly give one or more examples of HOW the criteria was met. 4. Unfortunately, there may be criteria for which your program does not have a process or data to report. Certainly, you do not want this lack to be large, but you must also be accurate in the report. Should there be gaps in meeting the requirements, write what the school or program plans to do to meet the criterion and then implement the strategy as soon as possible, certainly before the site visit. 5. Because there will likely be several writers of the self-study, when all portions of the report have been developed, have one writer edit the report so that it “speaks with one voice.” 6. Editing includes formatting the report to make it is consistent with the outline provided by the standards and criteria. Make it easy for the representative of the accrediting body to find documentation of important points. 7. Ask several people, including one person who has not been involved in the writing, to read the report and give you feedback. A fresh eye can pick up errors (including typos) that you might not see.
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The Evaluation Section
The Evaluation section, sometimes referred to as Program Effectiveness Plan (PEP) or Total Plan for Evaluation (TPE), is a critical component of the self-study report because it should clearly document continuous quality improvement efforts over time to ensure student success. The Department of Education requires the following evaluation results to be included in the self-study report: § Retention rate § Progression rate § Job placement rate § Pass rates of licensing or credentialing exams § Satisfaction of students/graduates and employers Often the evaluation standards are the ones for which it is most difficult to capture sufficient data. The retention and progression rates come from data collected while students are in their course of study, so developing an internal process for capturing this data each term makes the aggregate results easy to obtain. Results of licensing or credentialing examinations typically are either public information or provided to the programs of graduates taking the exams. On an ongoing basis, students should be assessing their experiences in class, lab, and clinical experiences in writing, so establishing a process for collecting and collating these responses in an aggregate format should be relatively simple. More difficult is capturing satisfaction rates of graduates and employers. Develop a process to ensure you have graduate addresses or emails, so that they can be contacted after graduation.
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