Southeast Missouri State University


Southern Connecticut State University

About the VALUE Institute

The VALUE Institute is a partnership with AAC&U and Indiana University’s Center for Postsecondary Research (CPR) to help support and spread use of the VALUE method to institutions throughout the country (and even across the world—we’ve already had some international participants!). Colleges and universities that sign up for the VALUE Institute work with our team to determine their purpose for participating, develop an appropriate sampling plan, and collect samples of student work to be scored by trained and certified VALUE scorers. After a school’s student work is scored, the VALUE Institute provides a customized institutional report, as well as a copy of all raw institutional data for additional exploration and manipulation by your campus stakeholders, if desired. As more institutions sign up to participate, we will also be able to benchmark and compare learning across institutions.

Why Should We Participate in the VALUE Institute?

Answer questions or investigate student learning in areas important to your campus

The ways in which you choose to participate in the VALUE Institute will be driven by the questions you are interested in investigating on your campus or the groups or programs you are interested in studying. Below are some examples of topics other campuses have investigated using the VALUE Institute:

  • Entering students, graduating students
  • General education
  • Capstone
  • Signature campus initiative e.g. learning communities, residential colleges, service-learning requirement, study-abroad, etc.
  • Transfer readiness (community colleges)
  • Accreditation

Validate internal scoring

Many institutions across the country are already using the VALUE Rubrics to assess student learning. Participating in the VALUE Institute can serve as a “check” on internal scoring processes and help you determine training needs of your faculty.

HOW MANY OUTCOMES SHOULD WE CHOOSE?

One Outcome per Year Multiple Outcomes per Year
You may choose to measure one outcome per year (for example, Critical Thinking in Year 1, Written Communication in Year 2, Quantitative Literacy in Year 3, etc.) Some institutions may prefer to measure multiple outcomes each year, more quickly getting through all the outcomes that align with institutional outcomes and priorities

HOW FREQUENTLY SHOULD WE PARTICIPATE?

Yearly Cyclically (every 2-3 years)
You can measure the same outcome every year and track changes in student learning over time. Some institutions like to measure one or more outcomes in a single year, then take one or two years to reflect on that data and make changes on campus before assessing the same outcomes again (and perhaps adding more).