Mapping Digital Community Activity and Data to Accreditation Standards
By Dr. Beverly Schneller, Vice President for Academic Quality, Research and Innovation, Kentucky State University
At Kentucky State University, we know how critical it is for students to have easy access to key support services across our campus. When COVID-19 made it difficult for students to connect with these teams in person, we created a digital alternative - a virtual student services community built on InScribe. In this space, our learners could connect easily, on-demand with the individuals and resources they need. As our community grew, we found that it had added benefits for our administration. Specifically, the questions asked provided insights into the changing needs of our students and influenced the way we supported them. And, it created an innovative new student support strategy that directly helps us fulfill our accreditation requirements.
Our primary InScribe community is called Thorobred Central and serves as a central kiosk that connects students to critical support services including Student Success, Health Services, Admissions and Financial Aid, Library and Technology Support, and Career Services and Professional Development. Students access the community from many places across our website, through email, and via text messages. We have found that creating multiple access points makes it easier for students to participate.
Initially launched as an information kiosk, our digital community has evolved into an interactive space where students share ideas, collaborate and form relationships. The analytics we gather through InScribe provides actionable information that is relevant both to our internal teams and our accrediting agency. Because we see strong evidence of engagement and demonstrate that we offer the same opportunities and services to our on-campus and online students, we can map the digital community activity and data directly to our accreditation standards.
SACSCOC, our accreditation agency, is keen to see the positive impact of the programs and services we offer. One thing we do to demonstrate that we’re adhering to high-quality standards is to showcase the impact of the software and tools we use to support our students. Within InScribe, we share data about the specific questions students are asking, the answer we provide, and the number of other students who view, like or otherwise or engage with that conversation. Altogether, we tangibly demonstrate how our virtual communities extend access to critical information and the number of students who are directly benefiting from those resources.
We also use the posts as evidence that the services we provide our online students are identical to those offered on-campus. For example, we've aligned our communities to operate in much the same way as the departments in our student services buildings. While on-campus learners may physically move from the admissions office to the financial aid office, online students now do the same from one virtual “office” to the next.
It's important to us to know that we are doing everything possible to support our students. As we look at the activity and data coming from our InScribe digital communities, we are confident these spaces are enhancing our students' education experiences. We see exactly where students need help, we identify areas that are most important to them and we provide the necessary evidence to align our initiatives with our accreditation requirements.
About the Author
Dr. Beverly E. Schneller is the Vice Provost for Academic Quality, Research, and Innovation at Kentucky State University. She has oversight of institutional compliance; graduate studies; grants and sponsored research and Title III; the international student experience; the University’s testing center; the liberal studies (General Education) program; institutional research; institutional effectiveness; and the Kentucky State University Medical Academy. She is the SACSCOC liaison; a SACSCOC program reviewer; a Teagle Foundation Assessment Scholar; and a graduate of the national Emerging Leaders Program. Dr. Schneller joined Kentucky State University in 2018. Since her arrival, she has led institutional projects resulting in the University’s successful ten-year reaffirmation with SACSCOC; multiple academic program reaffirmations; membership in the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges (the only school in Kentucky and the first and only HBCU); management of the Gray and Associates Curriculum Effectiveness Analysis Project; and academic quality enhancement projects including the Green Ribbon internal program review process. In addition, Dr. Schneller is leading the expansion of the Office of Grants and Sponsored Research and pursuing innovations in academic offerings and curriculum delivery including exploration of micro-credentials and badging to improve the work readiness of the citizens of the Commonwealth. Prior to her appointment at Kentucky State University, Dr. Schneller has held positions at Marist College ( NY), Millersville University (PA), The University of Baltimore (MD), and Belmont University (TN).