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Assessment Plan

Matthew Robinson

Wright State University

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Introduction

For this assignment, I will develop an assessment plan for an office or project in student

affairs. The assessment will look to provide a holistic approach to improving the office or

project, and will provide professional practice. Some of the things that will be covered include:

rationale for the assessment, how the assessment relates to goals, a literature review, review of

stakeholders, what types of assessment will be done, what other data will be used, how this data

will be analyzed and what we will be done with the assessment in terms of reporting. The

program I have chosen to assess is new student orientation at a smaller public university.

Rationale

New student orientation is a practice employed by many institutions of higher education

in the United States. From large public research universities to small local community colleges,

orientations are employed to welcome students onto campus and get them acclimated to the

college setting. Orientations can range in length, with some being half-day and others being

weekend long affairs. Topics deemed important for student success are typically presented at

orientation, for example: campus offices, student support services, dining options, campus

recreation, financial aid, and campus housing. For many students, orientation is the first real

interaction they have on campus and it can be very overwhelming. So, the goals of orientation

are to welcome students onto campus and to provide information on the many resources offered

on campus that are available to them.

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Relation to Goals

First, this assessment plan will measure if students feel welcome on campus after

orientation. Did the program reassure students that they made the right choice of university? Is

our campus an inviting one? As this will be one of the first introductions to campus to many new

students, the orientation program needs to make sure that those students feel that this is a campus

that will value them and welcome them.

This assessment plan will also allow our orientation program to see what students are

thinking when they complete orientation. Was the program able to answer any questions they

had? Was there any part of the program that could be eliminated? Was there any part of the

program that can be expanded? All of these questions will be addressed in this assessment plan

as well as other concerns like: effectiveness of orientation leaders, efficiency of check in process,

and the quality of academic advising.

This assessment plan is designed to make sure that students are receiving a high quality

orientation experience while also receiving the necessary information given out during each

session in a way that is both informative and dynamic. It is imperative to evaluate a large

program like orientation, especially if it is going to serve the vast majority of incoming students

to campus.

Literature Review

In developing this assessment, I reviewed a few articles detailing current studies related

to assessment and assessing orientation as a whole. These articles are included because they
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show the importance of orientation to student learning and the value of using assessment data to

influence what happens on orientation day.

The first article I reviewed was a multi-level assessment on the impact of orientation on

student learning. This study was conducted in 2009 by Matthew Mayhew, Kim Vanderlinden,

and Eun Kyung Kim. They found, ”that having a designated office for orientation programs on

campus was important for narrowing the academic learning gap between new-first year and

transfer students.” They also found that orientation helped student learning by providing a

smooth transition from high school to college and helping students find campus resources

(Mayhew, Vanderlinden, and Kim, 2009).

The next article I reviewed was an article on scaling programs by Michael N. Christakis.

Christakis argues that assessment data should be used to scale programs offered in student

affairs. This is so that we can make successful programs larger and review the necessity of less

successful programs. Christakis uses orientation as an example of scaling up when he describes

how small group time was received well by students and that the Office of New Student

Orientation adjusted the orientation day so that additional small group time would be

incorporated. “Furthermore, following these smaller group presentations students were able to

retain more information as well as identify resources, particularly individuals, they could contact

again when they returned to campus in the fall (Christakis, 2016).”

The last article I reviewed was written by Anthony C. Marziliano, Gina M. LaPan

Dennis, S. William Zito, and Marc E. Gillespie. In their article, Marziliano et al. explore the idea

of embracing students as equal stake holders in assessment culture. The article states,

“Assessment is a driving force for improving higher education; measuring goals and outcomes is

essential to understanding the true cause behind success or failure. This process requires
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stakeholder buy-in and a continuous cycle of improvement, both impossible without a robust

assessment culture that includes students (Marziliano et al., 2015).” This is important because

students are one of the main stakeholders in orientation as all of the programs involved is

designed with them specifically in mind.

Stakeholders

When it comes to orientation, there are many diverse stakeholders. The first and most

important are the incoming students. The orientation program is designed with new students in

mind. From morning check-in to the last student leaving, an effective orientation will have been

planned to maximize the students’ time and to provide that student with as many resources as

possible. So it stands to reason that students should be included as vital stakeholders in

assessment.

The next group of stakeholders of note is university faculty and staff. The students

coming through orientation will be the new students using services on campus and going to class

every day. Many staff members will present at a given orientation on various topics, so they will

be representing their offices in many students’ first exposure to them. Faculty and staff will also

want to ensure that students know where they are on campus and where to find both student

support and academic offices.

Orientation leaders are also stakeholders in the orientation program. OLs will be

interacting with the new students the most during the day and will be building strong

relationships with them. Providing a program that will allow OLs enough time to interact on

more than just the surface level will allow for students to ask questions that may not be
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addressed in the larger group presentations. Christakis showed in his article about scaling how

effective interactions in small groups were for the students (Christakis 2016).

The final group of stakeholders in orientation is the parents of students. For parents

attending orientation with their student, it is important to provide an equally dynamic and

informative presentation that is separate from the student one. Many parents will have numerous

questions which an orientation must be prepared to answer. Parents will want the best for their

student typically, and my even influence a student’s decision to stay enrolled at the university.

Types of Assessment

This assessment plan will consist of three types of assessment. First, we will be doing a

tracking assessment. Tracking is useful to us as it will provide quantitative data on the students

attending orientation. This information can include demographic information that may not be

obvious just be seeing who is registered for orientation. Tracking will be used to see who is

coming to orientation and who is not. We would implement this type of assessment in a few

ways.

First, we will be able to generate a list of everyone who is registered for orientation and

compare that to who actually checked in that morning. Next, we would track meal swipes at

lunch as students will have access to their student IDs. The last piece in tracking will be the end

of orientation survey, which will also be used in the outcomes assessment. This survey provides

the most qualitative data and will give us insight on how students feel after their orientation.

Outcomes assessment will see if we addressed our learning outcomes, which are

determined by the orientation program. For the purpose of this assessment, our orientation
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program has four learning outcomes for students: students will be able to identify at least five on

campus resources, students will find all of their classes, students will be able to identify at least

three student organizations, and students will make connections with at least one new person.

These outcomes will be measured with the aforementioned end of orientation survey, which will

be administered through an app on Guidebook. This will allow us to take advantage of

technology that digital natives are accustomed to and provides a way for us to keep multiple

years of data online for ease of access. Paper surveys will also be available.

The last assessment included in our plan is benchmarking. Benchmarking is useful to our

program because we can compare and contrast with other orientation programs that are of similar

size. Benchmarking is great way for us to see best practices around the country and begin to

implement them into our orientation. We can also use benchmarking within our university to see

how our unit compares to others. If we have a dedicated office of orientation, it will be very

valuable to compare our office with other student affairs offices in terms of administration.

Data to be Used

This assessment will be data driven, and will use data collected in many ways. Not only

will the quantitative and qualitative data provided by our planned assessment be used, but data

from past years will also be evaluated. This can include previous surveys implemented in the

past. One useful tool will be the SWOT analysis. SWOT is an acronym for strengths,

weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. We would invite stakeholders like faculty, staff, students,

and orientation leaders to come and share their thoughts on the program. This will provide us
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with rich qualitative data on orientation and will allow our key stakeholders a chance to shape

the program into what they think will best serve students.

As mentioned before, the end of orientation survey will also be crucial to data collection.

The survey will consist of multiple questions that will either be open ended or use the Likert

scale. This will be much better than a generic one to two question that only asks if the student

liked orientation and what they learned. By mixing up the questions, we can better measure our

learning outcomes and get both qualitative and quantitative data.

One other method of collection we will use is course evaluations from the First Year

experiences courses. If students indicate that something should have been included in orientation

and not the FYE course, we will take that feedback into consideration when making decisions on

the content in orientation. This also allows us to include more student feedback into our

evaluation process, even a year after they have gone through new student orientation. For

students who do not take the FYE course, we will also send a one year later survey asking

students to reflect on their first year and what they think would have made it better. If orientation

could be one of those improvements, it behooves us to hear that feedback.

Data Analysis

To analyze our data, we will be employing coding for qualitative data, and sorting all

quantitative data in different categories. For quantitative data, we can easily sort Likert scale

responses as well as responses that contain any numerical data. An example would be data

collected through asking the students to rate the food at lunch on a scale from one to five or
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needs improvement to excellent. For qualitative data and certain quantitative data, we will also

employ coding.

Coding will allow us to sort responses into different categories. These categories will

allow us to recognize trends in the responses, whether positive or negative, that we can then

begin to hone in on. For example, asking students to describe how they felt about coming to

campus after orientation will allow us to see if we are creating a welcoming environment, which

was one of the goals of orientation mentioned earlier.

Usage

Once all of the data is collected and analyzed, we will form comprehensive reports that

details all of the information collected in our assessments. The reason for multiple reports is

because we will be providing these reports to different groups of stakeholders. The concerns of

professionals may not be the concerns of students, so it is important to personalize data to each.

For example, because we want to know every response to every question in our survey, we can

generate a summary report that lists all of the questions and responses by page that will be used

by the orientation staff. It is important that we get these reports out in a timely manner and

address any negatives that are highlighted. Transparency with our stakeholders will allow for

trust and continued support.

The biggest use we will get out of this assessment plan is the improvement of new

student orientation. With this data, we will be able to plan for the next year’s orientation session

and begin to scale (Christakis, 2016) the most impactful parts of the program to better serve

incoming students. We will also be able to eliminate those aspects of orientation that are not
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benefitting our students or at least adjust them accordingly. For example, if the students all

express displeasure for a particular presentation, we can evaluate the necessity of that session

and whether the presenter is doing an adequate job in delivering the information.

One other important area that will be addressed is resources. Orientation can be

expensive and involve many different moving pieces. As budgets continue to shrink on campus,

our program needs to have data to support itself. By allowing data to drive our decisions, our

program will show that not only do we claim to serve a major need on campus, our data backs it

up. We will be able to prove to our stakeholders that orientation is a crucial part in student

success and that without orientation, our students will not be as well equipped for college success

as they could be.

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References

Christakis, M. N. (2016), Using Assessment Data to Scale Programs in Student Affairs.

Assessment Update, 28: 8–10. doi:10.1002/au.30078

Marziliano, A. C., LaPan-Dennis, G. M., Zito, S. W. and Gillespie, M. E. (2015), Embracing

Students as Equal Stakeholders in a Culture of Assessment. Assessment Update, 27: 6–

13. doi:10.1002/au.30010

Mayhew, M.J., Vanderlinden, K. & Kim, E.K. Res High Educ (2010) 51: 320.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-009-9159-2