Foundations of Institutional Research

Catalog description

Survey course explores fundamental methods and research on campus decisions, enrollment management, faculty work analysis, institutional effectiveness, accreditation, student outcomes. HI ED 801 Foundations of Institutional Research (3)This is a graduate level course that provides students with an overview of the institutional research profession and the most common functions that institutional research offices carry out. HI ED 801 is a core course in the IR Certificate Program and is designed for higher education professionals who seek to gain a fuller understanding of campus decision support activities and processes such as strategic planning, compliance reporting, enrollment management, resource management, institutional effectiveness, student outcomes assessment, and program evaluation. The course is designed:1)To give students a foundation in the concepts, methodologies, research practices, and information systems that support campus decision making.2)To examine the diversity of the institutional research profession, including office organization and staffing, and functions/activities.3) To acquaint students with the major IR topics including overview of National Data sets, Planning and Budgeting, Enrollment Management and enrollment forecasting, Faculty Studies and Instructional Analysis, Institutional Effectiveness and accreditation, Educational Effectiveness and Student Outcomes Assessment.4) To give students experience in using SPSS software, making Power Point presentations, and effective reporting on selected IR topics. During this course, the classroom and work experiences are aimed at understanding the readings, obtaining hands-on experience in analyzing data, and developing reporting skills for the purposes of institutional research. The course serves as a bridge to the other courses that will be offered subsequently in the Institutional Research Certificate program. This course introduces main topics, concepts and processes that are central to the practice of institutional research. It gives an overview of sources used in institutional research and the methods employed. Most importantly, this course aims at introducing students to a variety of reporting strategies and developing report writing skills. Pre-requisiste: Working knowledge of basic statistics.