Friday, September 22, 2000

Role of the Web in Accreditation Reviews Is Expanding, Experts Say By FLORENCE OLSEN This month, Winston-Salem State University wrapped up a two-year self-study that secured its reaccreditation. But unlike similar documents it has produced in the past, the new accreditation report was created online, in a process intended both to make the self-study more helpful to the institution and to make its results more accessible to others. Winston-Salem is one of a small but expanding group of institutions making use of the World Wide Web in accreditation reviews. Web technology will most likely play an even bigger role as some institutions shift from writing traditional self-study reports, like Winston-Salem's, to creating electronic portfolios to make their cases for reaccreditation. Colleges should take advantage of the Web as much as possible in the review process, says Jean Avnet Morse, executive director of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools, a regional accrediting agency, in Philadelphia. But she says smaller institutions might be daunted by the prospect of converting so many documents to a Web-friendly format. At Winston-Salem, which is part of the University of North Carolina System, administrators say the expense and effort of upgrading the college's Web site and converting the self-study documents was worthwhile because it allowed them to link the documents to institutional-research materials maintained by the system office in Chapel Hill. "Otherwise, it would have been necessary for us to generate the documents that were located at the other Web sites," says Merdis McCarter, associate vice chancellor for academic affairs at Winston-Salem. She was also codirector of the institutional review, which was conducted for the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, a regional accrediting body for Southern states. Like some other institutions that have put accreditation documents online, Winston-Salem gave its faculty members and students easy access to the reports, but requires outsiders to ask for a password before reading them. Other institutions are experimenting with electronic portfolios as an alternative to the traditional self-study reports. "You can use the Web to show teaching and learning in much more immediate ways," says Susan Kahn, national director of the Urban Universities Portfolio Project, a three-year grant program whose goal is to help institutions develop electronic portfolios. The portfolios project is financed by a $2.7-million grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts. The concept of institutional portfolios derives from teaching portfolios and their successors, student portfolios. "Much of the material that goes into these electronic portfolios is similar to what you might find in a course portfolio," Ms. Kahn says. But for the institutional portfolio, materials are presented in the context of the institutional mission and with other information that accreditors and legislators can look at "as evidence of effectiveness and accountability." "We had to kind of invent this genre," she says, "given that there really were no prototypes for us to work from." The Accrediting Commission for Senior Colleges and Universities of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, another accrediting body, likes the portfolio concept. The commission recently overhauled its accreditation procedures, and instead of the traditional self-study report, it now asks for an institutional portfolio -- ideally one that can be viewed on the Web. It took a while for people to become convinced that such a change might be necessary, says Ms. Kahn, who is also the director of programs and planning for the Office of Professional Development at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis. "I think there has been a growing sense of dissatisfaction" with traditional approaches to accreditation, Ms. Kahn says. Does the traditional self-study really improve the institution, she asks, or does a big state university wind up spending $2-million for a report that just "sits on a shelf"? "We're examining the potential of the new media to communicate more effectively what we do," she says. Background article from The Chronicle: 'Virtual' Institutions Challenge Accreditors to Devise New Ways of Measuring Quality (8/6/1999) Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

U. of California proposes accepting 2-year transfer students to broaden admissions N.I.H. proposes rules to govern potential conflicts of scientists who weigh grant requests Updates on 10 capital campaigns As lawyer's deadline nears, universities say they won't block access to Napster 25 universities pledge to increase research in computing for the disabled Role of the Web in accreditation reviews is expanding, experts say Snapshot: A look at a distance-education course in "Science, Technology, and Culture"