The purpose of generating, gathering, and analyzing data on Institutional Effectiveness and Student Learning is to improve the institution's performance of its key functions: enrolling, supporting, and educating its students. Data for these purposes falls into two categories:

1. reports that are mandated by the state, by the community college system, and/or by accrediting agencies; this data may be part of the public record and therefore accessible to anyone.
2. data that is generated by a particular office, department, committee, or team for a particular purpose; such data may include customer satisfaction surveys, service utilization figures, Banner reports, and/or data on student performance in course-level, program specific, or college-wide assessment activities.

For the purpose of this policy, public data is public: once it is reported, posted, or published it is available to anyone who takes the time to look for it, quote it, cite it, and make use of it. However, the second type of data, which is generated in-house for a particular purpose, is not public information, and the college must establish guidelines to cover the reporting, posting, publishing, and manipulation of this data for purposes for which is was not originally intended.

Proposed Guidelines for Non-Public Data

1. The office, department, committee, or team that produces the data has control of the data's use. For example, the Executive Committee sub-committee on planning and institutional effectiveness controls the use of data it generates on how the college is performing in relation to its strategic goals; academic departments and programs control the use of data on student performance in those programs, including performance on licensure exams, etc.; departments that conduct customer satisfaction surveys control the use of those results; and results compiled by the college-wide Assessment Implementation Team may be reported as aggregate data to appropriate offices, departments, and governance committees but may not be disseminated beyond the college without the consent of Assessment Coordinator and Assessment Advisory Council. Those who control the use of particular data may summarize that information at levels of generality appropriate for reporting in All-College meetings, through the Institutional Assessment Portfolio, or through other means, but may not be compelled to do so.
2. The Office of Institutional Research, which has access to sensitive data related to every academic program, department, and college‚wide assessment activity, must obtain the permission of those who control the use of non-public data before reporting, posting, or publishing any non-public data or using that data for any purpose beyond the original intention of those who produced the data.

1. Limited use of student learning assessment findings
   Data collected for the assessment of student learning is governed by four questions: What do students know? When do they know it? Who needs this information for decision making? How will we use this information to enhance student learning? All student learning assessment projects must focus on and be limited to answering these questions. Therefore, the findings of assessment implementations are not appropriate for uses beyond those directed toward improving student learning. The Assessment Implementation Team controls the use of information it collects, sharing it with relevant college departments in accordance with standards of confidentiality and clarity of purpose. The team or departments may report summaries, conclusions, or actions based on the assessment data, tailoring these reports for public purposes in accordance with Guideline #1 above. All assessment results will be prefaced with the following disclaimer:
   This information is one indicator of student performance in relation to a specific goal. It is the result of an assessment project expressly designed to guide decisions concerning the improvement of student learning.
2. Anonymous aggregate reporting
   To maintain student and faculty involvement in the assessment process, the college must assure that no grades, awards, evaluations, or judgments about any individual can be adversely affected by participation in an assessment study. For this, the college must be able to promise that no student, teacher, or small group can be identified through the assessment reports. Since the college is a public institution and open to pressure for information from many quarters, to keep that promise it must take measures to disconnect assessment findings and reports from the Banner identification numbers through which a huge amount of information can be connected with individuals. The Assessment Implementation Team has revised its research design to assure that reports are confined to aggregates of anonymous participants.
3. Maintaining focus on practical teaching and learning applications
   The student learning assessment movement began among teachers who wanted to gather information on which to make decisions to better support student learning. More recently, the language of assessment has been adopted by external evaluators and funders who are concerned about institutional accountability, and the methods of gathering and using data for external accountability often run counter to the methods best suited to assessment projects in quest of interventions to improve learning. Although data from some assessment projects can serve both internal and external purposes, other assessment data may serve internal purposes only. To keep assessment focused on the practical internal uses of information, teaching faculty must lead in generating questions, implementations, and interpretations.