Academic Advising and Disability Services

Annual Report

2010-2011

I.Mission Statement, Student Learning Goals and Student Learning Outcomes

A. Mission of the Program

The role of the Academic Advising and Disability Services (AA/DS) office within the college is to provide guidance to students and faculty in the overall advising process and to support the academic life of all Westmont students, including those with disabilities. Though there is some natural overlap between the conversations and functions within these roles, they do have distinct differences. In recognition of this, they will each have a separate mission statement.

The mission of the disability services area is: To support, encourage and sustain the academic and personal development of students with disabilities and work towards greater recognition of differently-abled minds and bodies as aspects of the diversity in God’s kingdom.

The mission for the academic advising area was one of the goals that was pursued in this annual assessment cycle.

B. Student Learning Goals and Outcomes

These goals and outcomes have had minor changessince they were detailed in the 08-09 Annual Report.See Section II: Action Items from the 08-09 Report.

Program Improvement Goal: Develop a mission statement for the Academic Advising program. This statement will give a focus to the department and help guide our vision through the assessment process.
Individual Contributions – The Provost and our college catalogue will be important pieces here.
Methods of Assessment – Discussions with faculty members after the development to see if the mission statement is compatible with their vision of academic advising. Discussions with small groups of students to assess their knowledge of the mission statement and the perceived differences within the advising relationship from high school to college.

Program Improvement Goal: Develop a robust Academic Advising webpage that students can use as a 24/7 resource. This website will include some of the common academic advising questions, as developed through discussions with current students across the educational levels at Westmont.
Student Learning Outcome – Students will access the Academic Advising webpage and use it as a resource in their academic planning.
Student Learning Standard – This goal is designed to target the Active Societal and Intellectual Engagement learning standard, with the sub areas of Interpersonal Competence and Responsibility
Individual Contributions – Involvement with students to assess their needs for information and working with the IT department on the development of the key pages.
Methods of assessment –Discussions with students (small group and one-on-one) at the end of the web page development and throughout the year to see if the topics cover the present concerns of our students. Also keeping track of the number of times each web page is accessed in a given academic year.

Program Improvement Goal: Develop a robust Academic Advising webpage that faculty can use as a 24/7 resource for some of the common issues they will come across in advising students. This website will also include information on how to advise undecided students, as well as the development of an Academic Advising syllabus for all 4 years of a students education. The topics chosen to be covered will be ones generated through discussion with our new and returning academic advisors.
Faculty Learning Outcomes – faculty will access the website and use it as a resource when advising their students
Individual Contributions – Involvement with faculty to assess their needs for information and working with the IT department on the development of the key pages.
Methods of assessment –Discussions with faculty (small group and one-on-one) at the end of the web page development and throughout the year to see if the topics cover the present concerns of our faculty. Also keeping track of the number of times each web page is accessed in a given academic year.

Program Improvement Goal: Evaluate the process by which we inform students about our educational program. This goal will be to look at the way that we present academic life at Westmont to prospective students, and to plan redundancies into the progression so that students have multiple points of contact with consistent messages about our academic program.
Staff Learning Outcome – staff in the Admissions office will present a unified message regarding the academic policies/procedures of the college and information on each major department to the incoming students.
Student Learning Outcome – Students will have an understanding of the academic policies, procedures and components of the college appropriate to their class rank.Students will be able to use information given to them about the available majors to make informed choices about their potential major options.
Student Learning Standard – This goal will target the Active Societal and Intellectual Engagement learning standard, with the sub areas of Interpersonal Competence and Responsibility
Individual Contributions – The directors of Admissions and AA/DS will be necessary, as well as the individual academic counselors in the delivery and data collection for this area.
Methods of assessment – With members of the admissions office, evaluating the written materials that are sent to prospective and confirmed students for consistency and areas where we can build in redundancies. Also evaluate the typical questions that are received from the admissions staff to see what their oral communication is regarding our academic programs and whether formal advising training is needed.

Program Improvement Goal: Examine the effectiveness of our advisor assignment methods. Is this the most accurate way to assign advisees, or are there better methods?
Student Learning Outcome – Students will be able to use information given to them about the available majors to make informed choices about their potential major options.
Student Learning Standard – This goal will influence the Christian Orientation standard, with the subarea of practices, the Critical-Interdisciplinary Thinking standard, with the sub area of collaborating, and the Diversity standard, with the subarea of process of making choices.
Individual Contributions – This goal will require contributions from other colleges to determine alternate advisor assignment methods, the Admissions Office for data gathering on academic interests.
Methods of assessment – Looking at the ways other schools assign incoming advisees (especially undecided’s), examining student interest designations and if there is persistence from their admissions application to their first semester. One-on-one conversations with our undecideds to see if there are improvements that need to be made/additional training for the faculty that needs to occur.

Program Improvement Goal: Revision of the tool for the assessment of advisor effectiveness. Because it is used within promotion and tenure review, and has alternative uses within the assessment process for departments, it is essential that our assessment method for advisor effectiveness yield accurate, valid information on the students perceptions of our advisors.
Individual Contributions – This goal will require contributions from other colleges for samples of their advisor assessment instruments, as well as potential involvement from the Campus Life office to help in the coordination of small focus groups of students. It will also require the participation of students at all class ranks to determine the effectiveness of the assessment tool at summarizing their perceptions on the assessment process.
Methods of assessment – Small group work with students to determine if the new form allows them the freedom to express the information they want to share on their advising session. Examining how many students complete the revised form versus how many completed the original one. Analyzing if the revised form yields additional details or richness from the students.

II. Action Items from 08-09 Report

Action Items

It was noted in the 08-09 report that our office services faculty, staff and students (see Appendix A). To that end, it was recommended that we include learning standards and benchmarks as appropriate to each Program Improvement Goal.

Update to the Action Item

One faculty learning outcome was added to Program Improvement Goal #3 and one staff learning outcome was added to Program Improvement Goal #4.

Additional Issues

None

III. 2009-2010 Focus

Develop a mission statement for the Academic Advising program.

Summary of Assessment Efforts
During the beginning of the fall 2010 semester research was done into the academic advising mission statements from a range of institutions similar in size and location to Westmont. Such institutions included UCSB, CSUCI, SBCC, Biola, California Lutheran University and Azusa Pacific University among others. A list of themes within these mission statements was recorded.

In late fall 2010, Rick Pointer, the acting Provost, and I met to review these themes. We discussed first what Rick thought were essential elements of an advising mission statement, then added those to the list of themes and reviewed the complete list (see Appendix B). I then set out to take the themes and craft a mission statement from them. That version of the mission statement was then vetted through Rick again before being shown to other faculty (see Appendix C).

The mission statement was then shown to various faculty in all three divisions of the college for edits (see Appendix D). Many of these faculty had been advisors for a number of years. As a final check, it was also shown during the final training session for new academic advisors (see Appendix E)

The departmental benchmark was to create a mission statement that reflected the goals and practice of our academic advising program.

Appendix B – The initial list of themes from other institutions academic advising mission statements

Appendix C – Draft 1 (post Rick’s edits) for faculty review

Appendix D – Draft 2 (post initial faculty edits)

Appendix E – Draft 3 (post new faculty edits) final version

This data is saved on Z:/academic_advising/Assessment Data/09-10 Assessment Data/Mission Statement

Interpret the Results

Based on conversations with the Provost and advisors in various departments, it seems that the content of the mission statement was largely reflective of the cultural understanding of our missionin the first draft. This is significant since the initial themes were developed from the mission statements at similar institutions (relative to size, type and geographical proximity) to Westmont, indicating that our focus on academic advising is in line with these institutions. Changes to organization and content were more characteristic from the initial list to the first draft. Subsequent drafts focused more on grammar and clarity issues.

Make a Response

The new mission statement was posted online in June 2010 for the incoming class of students to review. It will guide the rest of our assessment efforts for this year and in the future. In the 2010-2011 school year we will be meeting with students in small groups and one-on-one to determine their familiarity with the mission statement and if they perceive a difference in the advising relationship between high school and college.

Develop a robust Academic Advising webpage

Summary of Assessment Efforts
During the 2008-2009 school year information was collected by the director of the department on the various types of questions that were commonly asked from her advisees. These questions were then organized and categorized into topics, and webpages were developed to address the major types of questions. In order to address topic areas that were not covered, and to provide better support to the users of the website, a link was also added into the side bar entitled “Need More Info?” By clicking on the link and submitting the form, an e-mail of the question(s) would be sent to the director for a reply. At the end of the 2008-2009 year initial data was taken on the number of times each webpage was accessed.

In the 2009-2010 year, additional efforts were made to publicize this information. This included making reference to it in e-mail and face-to-face conversations with students, as well as adding a more detailed sidebar to the “Make an Advisor Appointment” webpage. That way, when students were directed there by their advisor to make an advising appointment, they would also see the other topics addressed on the main advising website. Outside of those areas, a link to the main academic advising site was also added on the Student Records office homepage as well as under the “Academics” webpage, which is in the main header bar on every Westmont webpage. The new website was also shown to the new faculty advisors during advisor training.

The departmental benchmark was an increase in the numbers of individuals accessing the website from the initial 2008-2009 numbers. A second benchmark was that the information students were asking questions about via e-mail and through the“Need more info” linkon the main page were reflected on the website.

Table 3 – Access numbers from 2008-2009 and 2009-2010

Table 4 – Academic questions asked for 2009-2010

The raw data is saved on Z:/academic_advising/Assessment Data/09-10 Assessment Data/Student Webpage

Interpret the Results

The data obtained for the 2009-2010 school year is both encouraging and surprising (see Table 3). The number of times students accessed the main page has held steady with approximately 2000 hits each year. With a community our size, it is encouraging to see consistent use over time.

The use of the Advising Appointments website has continued to grow, from a little over 2000 hits in 2008-2009 to over 3500 hits between 2009-2010. This website allows faculty to establish open advising times, and then send a preformatted e-mail with instructions on how to sign up for an appointment to their advisees. Students then log in at their leisure and select one of the available times. Once chosen, an e-mail is then sent to the faculty and the student as a record of the new appointment. We cannot break down how many users of each type we have (students vs. faculty), but these numbers give a clear indication that the webpage is being used by both groups to schedule advising appointments. As might be expected, the highest volume of use is during the fall and spring registration periods. There are a few scattered hits (from 0-6 per day) in the times between registrations. This may suggest that students are attempting to use this webpage as a way to make appointments with their advisors throughout the year.

The reason for the discrepancy between the Advising Appointments access numbers and the main page access numbers is because many faculty guide students to the Advising Appointments webpage directly when setting up appointments, versus pointing them to the general Academic Advising website and having them select Advising Appointments as an option. It was also noted that the default instruction e-mail that is sent by thefaculty to their advisees includes the url to the Advising Appointments webpage, not to the main Academic Advising website.

Webpages like the Four Year Plan for Academic Advising and Academic Advising FAQ saw volume nearly as high in 2009-2010 as they had in 2008-2009. This could be due to the content nature of these sites, proving large overviews of complex material versus answers to one specific question. This may lead people to visit them multiple times throughout the year.

All of the other webpages for Academic Advising had a decrease in the number of hits between 2008-2009 and 2009-2010. A few things could be contributing to this decline. It may be that in 2008-2009 as the website was being developed, a large number of students and faculty were looking at the information. Now having that knowledge, there is no need for them to go back to it again. So we could have had a bubble of users come through, and now what we are seeing is the actual yearly usage. A lack of appropriate publication of the site might be another one. Many of these new links to other college wide websites are fairly recent. If students and faculty do not know these pages exist, then they cannot use them as resources.

In addition to the quantitative data, qualitative data on the types of questions asked by students was also collected. This consisted of the questions e-mailed by students to the director over the 2009-2010 year (see Table 4). In terms of the three most often asked question areas (transfer issues, off campus programs and changing advisors) most of the information to answer those questions can be found on the website. Transfer questions tend to have many layers, and the current website does not address all of the questions that were received. There were some questions (planning out the next 1-3 years and difficulties with classes/professors) that are best addressed face to face, as it is not an issue of information the students need but a person to process a unique situation with them.