As we near the end of the Spring semester, many faculty and staff are completing Administrative Unit and Educational Program AY 2022-2023 Assessment Reports in UNCW’s Taskstream Accountability Management System (AMS) with many activities occurring before or during the upcoming fall term. The timeline of assessment activities, presented below, varies depending on the type of assessment reports faculty and staff are submitting. As you close out the end of the year, it is important to ensure that you and your units are completing the various assessment, reporting, and planning activities.
Administrative Units
Assessment Activity by Month
July (Last business day – July 31, 2023)
Administrative Units Assessment Reports Completed for the Previous Year (AY 2022-23)
August
Administrative Unit Assessment Planning
September (Last Business Day – September 29, 2023)
Administrative Unit Assessment Plans Developed for the Current Year (AY 2023-24)
Educational Programs
August
Program Assessment Planning
October (1st Business Day – October 2, 2023)
Academic Programs’ Outcomes (PO) and Student Learning Outcomes (SLO)
Assessment Reports Completed for the Previous Year (AY 2022-23)
PO & SLO Assessment Plans Developed for the Current Year (AY 2023-24)
Notes for faculty and staff who have a role in assessment planning or reporting.
If your role requires you to manage your program or unit’s assessment process, please consider joining the Critical Friends Assessment Academy (CFAA) being hosted by the Office of Institutional Research and Planning June 20 and 21. Critical Friends Assessment Academy is a professional learning community that provides a common knowledge base for engaging in assessment and continuous improvement of assessment practices with the goal of contributing to strengthening and improving programs and student learning. All skill levels are welcome and encouraged to attend.
If you attend, we ask you to serve as a resource during the annual assessment process in your college or unit. The CFAA emphasizes the importance of assessment work while providing a respectful atmosphere where collaboration across academic programs and administrative units and constructive feedback is encouraged. Participants will have the opportunity to apply strategies and knowledge gained while working on their program or unit assessment reports.
The Academy will be led by Jaci Webb-Dempsey, Director of Program Assessment, Accreditation, and Development for the CSB, CHHS, and WCE; Diana Ashe, Director for Center for Faculty Leadership; and Kimberly Miller, Director of Institutional Effectiveness. As part of a one-day administrative unit training track, staff participants will receive assessment training and lunch on June 20. Staff participants must first gain approval to attend training from their reporting supervisor. As part of a two-day educational program assessment training track, faculty participants will receive an $800 stipend ($400 per day) and lunch will be provided each day on June 20 and 21. The number of participants is limited to 20 spaces for administrative units and 25 spaces for academic program faculty. Spaces are filled on a “first come, first reserved” basis.
If you are interested in participating in the two-day educational program track, please email Jaci Webb-Dempsey at dempseyj@uncw.edu or if you are interested in the one-day administrative unit track, please email Kimberly Miller at millerka@uncw.edu by Friday, May 26.
This academy fills up fast, so please do not hesitate to register!
If you are a faculty member, you may have spent too much time pulling all your information together for annual reports, RTP applications, and other reporting requests. We have heard from you.
The Institutional Effectiveness Office (IE) has been working with faculty representatives to make changes to the Watermark Faculty Success (WFS) platform to reduce the burden of faculty reporting. We found ways to connect technologies the university is already using to WFS to save you time, and we optimized our use of the WFS platform to make sure it will work for you. We look forward to saving you many hours in the years ahead!
In this article, we are excited to share how WFS can lighten your workload and offer new possibilities – both right now, and in the future.
The VITA report is ready and available for your use in WFS! This feature can produce a report on all of your teaching, research, scholarship, and service that you have entered into WFS*, formatted into a curriculum vita (c.v.). Downloading the report into Microsoft Word allows you to edit the content as desired.
For annual reporting, the VITA report can be used to submit your information, or it can be pulled directly by department chairs. By using this WFS feature, you can keep your c.v. updated while you complete your annual reports, too – zero additional effort.
*Note: In order for this report to work properly, it requires you to upload your information on a regular basis. Need help or have questions? Email us at ie@uncw.edu
In Fall 2022, the Center for Faculty Leadership’s Leadership UNCW faculty work group met to align the current RTP application with how information is collected through the WFS platform. The goal? To enable faculty members to generate their RTP applications within WFS. This work is ongoing with many stakeholder steps – check out the latest progress below.
The Leadership UNCW faculty working group and the IE team worked throughout the fall semester to align WFS with the RTP application, identifying many proposed changes. In January, the group began sharing its work with multiple stakeholder groups of faculty and staff from across the university to gather feedback and ensure that all disciplines would be able to use WFS to report their accomplishments. The proposed changes, with adjustments from the gathered feedback, were approved by the WFS Advisory Board. Next, the Faculty Leadership Work Team will bring the proposed changes to the Faculty Senate for review.
The IE team is working with Information Technology Services (ITS) and data stewards to upload IDEA Course Evaluation scores used for RTP into WFS platform. These scores will be incorporated into the WFS RTP application (mentioned in the section above) to make your efforts in compiling this information cease to exist. No more need to create your own tables of IDEA scores! Our goal is to gain the required leadership approvals on an automated process this spring. If achieved, we can make changes within the platform and test over the summer months.
Stay tuned . . . This new feature could be available in your WFS account’s reporting menu as early as August 2023.
Have you visited Scholars@UNCW yet? Check out how it provides a digital search engine for our campus community to find and make connections with others who share the same research and scholarship interests. It’s also available to the general public, making it easy for anyone to find subject matter experts located right here at UNCW.
Take a moment to browse the system’s search feature to see who shares similar research interests about any topic. Questions? Email Associate Provost Lucy Holman, at holmanl@uncw.edu.
Randall Library, the manager of Scholars@UNCW, is exploring ways to showcase faculty scholarship.
The IE team has reviewed all WFS reports and updated access requirements. This means your menu should be shorter, streamlined to provide relevant reports for your area.
Research and development: The IE team is exploring how to align WFS with OSPREY. More to come on this!
Annual reporting: the possibilities here are endless! Stay tuned for future updates as the IE team digs into more enhanced reporting ease with WFS.
Learn more about the enhanced WFS platform on the Watermark Faculty Success Resource SharePoint Site, or email us at ie@uncw.edu.
Please also join us in thanking the following faculty and staff who have been instrumental in providing their expertise and input to assist in streamlining core faculty reporting processes – and, overall, making our faculty reporting easier and more efficient for you!