PLAN GENERAL DE LA INVESTIGACIÓN

Accrediting bodies often struggle with maintaining consistent application of the standards throughout the region. In the case of NCA-HLC, PEAQ’s comprehensive review process and AQIP’s formal reaffirmation of accreditation process are hallmark evaluations where students, staff and faculty need assurance that they are being judged fairly and objectively. In each case, peer reviewers conduct an institutional assessment, which is then reviewed by the Institutional Actions Council and then the board. In this multi-layered system, one set of reviewers may judge more harshly than the other, causing a misalignment in commission practices. The following section focuses on how assurance in this area is integral to the AQIP review procedures.

Alignment of Commission Expectations with the Understanding of Institutions and Evaluators

NCA-HLC enacts certain practices to strengthen the consistent application of the standards and to ensure that teams, colleges and the commission have an equal understanding of the review process. For example, team training provides a significant opportunity for peer reviewers to gain a deeper understanding of objectively measuring the criteria for accreditation. NCA-HLC shares accreditation case scenarios and informs peer reviewers through face-to-face and online team training sessions, multi-day face-to-face training for new peer reviewers, chair seminars and specialty workshops at the annual meeting.

Resources, guides and templates are available online and distributed during each of the above listed training sessions in an effort to calibrate the assessment process for peer reviewers. For example, as identified earlier in this section, a systems appraisal is a significant review occurring every four years to assess the college’s progress in the nine designated AQIP systems. An AQIP systems appraisal guide can be found online and includes items such as a glossary of important terms (e.g., systems appraisal team leader, gap and consensus review). It also includes one worksheet per system and a flow chart to standardize the understanding of the systems appraisal rubrics and the flow of peer reviewer feedback. Although the guidebook does not provide concrete examples of each, it lists rubrics that include outstanding strength, strength,

improvement opportunity and outstanding improvement opportunity. Further, the guidebook provides explicit details surrounding the consensus conversation, an activity that frames working through an issue that has been found to threaten a college’s accreditation. Sample evaluator feedback is placed in the guidebook to give peer reviewers a model.

Finally, NCA-HLC assigns a staff member or accreditation liaison to all affiliated colleges and universities and an AQIP liaison to all AQIP schools. This individual is directly responsible for communicating standardized practices and procedures. As cited on the NCA-HLC website:

The Accreditation Liaison is a new role established by the Commission for improving

communication with its affiliated institutions. For AQIP Institutions, the Accreditation Liaison may be the same person who serves as the AQIP Liaison. The Accreditation Liaison is appointed by your CEO.

Consistency across Evaluation Teams

To further prevent misalignment across review teams, AQIP’s vice president for accreditation relations explained that AQIP has a three-pronged process for AQIP’s reaffirmation of

accreditation. First, a reaffirmation panel conducts AQIP’s summative evaluations, which are then presented to the Institutional Actions Council. “The reaffirmation panel…has as its input the formative evaluations of all the other AQIP processes over the previous six years.” Second, the IAC, comprised largely of experienced peer reviewers, as noted in an earlier section of this document, conducts a final review and forwards its recommendation to the board of

commissioners for action and validation. As described by the vice president “The Institutional Actions Council is our second level of review and the board treats its actions as a consent agenda and doesn't second-guess IAC.” Thus, AQIP’s reaffirmation panel informs the IAC, which informs the board. According to the vice president for accreditation relations in the last four years of implementing this method of review, there have been only two cases where the IAC questioned the reaffirmation panel on the outcome of a review and both cases were subsequently handled appropriately.

Further, the vice president stated that consistency would be difficult to achieve without the three- pronged, streamlined process. He asserted:

This is far easier to achieve than it would be if I had a different team making the summative

recommendation for each school (as is the case with our traditional process). The inner workings of the reaffirmation panel force consensus. We carry half of the panel forward each year so there are no abrupt changes in the overall perspectives the panelists bring to their task. I get direct and quick feedback from IAC (they usually call me to come to any meeting where they have questions about the panel's recommendation). I, in turn, bring back to the AQIP reaffirmation panel any indication that IAC's standards are diverging from those the panel is using.

College respondents most commonly cited NCA-HLC’s annual meeting as the most effective method for understanding the commission’s expectations and the criteria of accreditation. The Strategy Forum was the second most popular resource for understanding the criteria. For example, College B’s accreditation liaison officer cited that both the annual meeting and the Strategy Forum are helpful and provide clear directions to meet the criteria and understand how it will be applied. She appreciated the presence and direction of the commission staff at these sessions.

…our AQIP liaison attends the Strategy Forum and goes into each college’s session at least once. He reviews what the commission expects from us and he always keeps us in touch with what’s going on in the US Department of Education.

This respondent went on to say, though, that she would like to see more specialty workshops offered to support the information she is gaining from the annual meeting and help her understand the standards.

As the lead author for her school’s systems portfolio, College B’s faculty point person stated that she attended a writing workshop to augment her understanding of the criteria and found it to be helpful in understanding how the commission would interpret the document.

In summary, although the AQIP reaffirmation process is complex, the vice president for

accreditation relations maintains that it is a tight and cohesive internal process, thus ensuring as much consistency as possible. Interviewees had only positive remarks regarding any type of review process, whether it was the quality checkup visit or the systems appraisal. One

interviewee from College B commented that, in regards to consistency, she found a discrepancy in the comprehensive review process but informed the commission right away, so changes could be made to the process going forward. This experience is described in more detail in the section on Evaluator Training.