/Division of Educational and Institutional Effectiveness
Office of Educational Effectiveness

Academic Program Assessment FAQs

Switching from  the prior Google Docs  reporting system to using the OEE Content Management System provides multiple benefits: 

  • Access your program's historical data (prior reports, feedback documents, etc.) all in one centralized place.
  • Includes instructions and embedded resources to guide your submission.
  • Helps align programmatic data across assessment initiatives, such as program review, accreditation, and strategic planning.
  • Facilitates better tracking and aggregation of data across programs, departments, and schools to inform University-wide assessment outcomes.
  • Use of the OEE CMS instead of a third-party assessment management system ensures programmatic data is secure and allows OEE to customize requirements to meet the needs of SBUs internal assessment processes.

No.

You can assess as many PLOs annually as you would like, but SBU's flexible approach to assessment only requires that you assess one PLO per year. 

No.

You should have submitted a complete assessment plan in 2022, year 1 of SBU's 5-year assessment cycle.  The plan should have included a complete list of your program goals, program learning objectives, assessment location, assessment methods, assessment timeline/frequency and assessment benchmarks. You are welcome to make edits and updates to these elements as you see fit, but revision is not required annually. Instead, only the assessment of at least one PLO and updating your accomplishments, improvements, and evidence is required annually. 

We hope that you will take the Council's feedback into consideration and use their suggestions to improve your assessment plan, but their feedback is non-binding and may not be applicable to the nuances of your program's mission, goals, or learning objectives. Please note, however, that if choose not to use the Council's feedback to make changes or improvements, you may receive similar feedback in subsequent reviews. 

The following timeline provides an overview of SBU's 5-year assessment cycle from academic years (AY) 2022-2027:

  • Year 1: AY 2022-2023 - Report due February 20, 2023. 

  • Year 2: AY 2023-2024 - Report due February 23, 2024. 

  • Year 3: AY 2024-2025 - Report due September 30, 2025.

  • Year 4: AY 2025-2026 - Report due September 30, 2026.

  • Year 5: AY 2026-2027 - Report due September 30, 2027.

By the completion of the assessment cycle in 2027, you should have assessed all of your PLOs at least once. Then, the 5-year cycle will start over between 2027-2032.

No.

Accredited programs are not required to submit annual assessment reports at this time, unless otherwise specificed by your individual School/College leaders.

Accredited programs have specialized, discipline-specific accrediting agencies at the program level. A complete list of SBUs accredited programs is available on our website. If your program is not listed there, then it is considered non-accredited and an annual assessment report is required. 

Submitting your annual assessment plan can help your program make incremental progress toward curricular, pedagogical, and student learning improvement in an evidence-based way.

In addition, all non-accredited programs periodically participate in an external review process called Department/Program Review. Your annual assessment report will serve as a useful source of information and student outcomes data to support your self-study document. 

The SBU Assessment Council review all assessment reports using a collaboratively developed standardized rubric and provides improvement-oriented feedback to programs.