Sindicate

Team Leader: Ken Wardinsky

Team Members
Wendy Dove, Rebecca Johnson, Roger Peffer, Lanni Klasner, Ed Binkley, Patti Kercher, Benjamin Truman, Jeff Brown, Cherie McKeever

Goal I – Establish and communicate clear, measurable goals for improved student success and institutional effectiveness.

Task A: Establish a new indicator that directly measures students’ success through the analysis of successful course completion, looking at the percent of students who earned a C- or higher in all coursework.

Task B: Using historical data, comparative peer data, and aspirational targets, establish FY12 goals for the College’s Core Indicators of Institutional Effectiveness.  Communicate these via a special focus IR newsletter during early fall term, with continued communication through a variety of modes (blurb in Weekly News, video screens, Facebook, etc.).

Task C: Identify the 10 courses with the smallest percentage of successful student completions, and the primary gatekeeper courses with below-average rate of student success (institutional average in FY10 is 77%), and establish multi-year goals for improvement in these rates. 

Task D: Create and maintain a SharePoint site where institutional reports (e.g., core indicator reports, enrollment reports, survey reports, etc.) can be shared with the campus community. Institutional Research will also start a documentation process for all reports so that any data used in reports can be replicated. 

Purpose
Over the past several years, MSU-Great Falls has established a set of “indicators of success” (to include the new indicator based on student course grades) to measure how it is performing in key areas. The team is working to set goals for each indictor, improve how these indicators are measured and better communicate the results both on- and off-campus.

Strategy
The team’s basic strategy is to collect and analyze data, communicate these data, set goals for improvement and monitor the results.

Timeline
During Fall 2011, Sindicate has established the new indicator measuring student success and has begun collecting data on all indicators (Task B); FY12 goals will be set for each indicator. An e-newsletter to communicate this information is under development and expected to begin publication in January 2012. The team has identified the 10 courses and, working with the Code Blue team, will set goals for these courses during Spring Semester 2012. The list will be re-created at the end of each academic year. The IRData Sharepoint is now available; access to selected folders has been granted to all faculty and staff.