Accessing the Self-Study Report
There are multiple areas of the Planning & Self Study homepage where a user can access the Self-Study report(s) that they have been assigned to. These are:
- The "Project Tracker", which appears towards the top of the homepage
- The "Service & Committee Involvement" dashboard, which appears towards the bottom of the homepage
Once the Self-Study is located in either of these areas, the user would simply click into it to begin adding content.
Accessing the Assigned Standards
Once the user clicks into the Self-Study report, they will be brought to a screen from where their assigned Standards can be accessed. They will be listed on a left-hand menu from where they can be individually selected.
In the example shown below, the user is assigned to two specific sections of the Self-Study - "Mission Statement" and "Faculty Qualifications". Selecting either will produce the two options by which content is added to a Self-Study:
- "Write Narrative"
- "Manage Evidence"
Writing the Narrative
Selecting "Write Narrative" will produce the text-entry interface.
Text can be typed directly into this area, or it can be copied and pasted from outside sources.
PLEASE NOTE that copying and pasting into the Narrative can come with the unintended consequence of carrying extraneous formatting from the source material. This can sometimes cause unpredictable behavior in the Self-Study. Thus, whenever pasting text, we would recommend doing so with the following keyboard command:
- PC: Ctrl+Shift+V
- Mac: Command+Option+Shift+V
These commands will paste the text without including the source formatting.
For additional tips on safely entering content into a Self-Study, we would recommend reviewing the resource linked below:
Best Practices when Entering Content into a Self-Study
This linked document also covers:
- Formatting Narrative Text
- Adding Links to Narrative Text
- Inserting Tables into Narrative
Managing Evidence
Evidence is documentation that can be referenced in support of the Narrative. Planning & Self Study allows the following to be included as evidence in your Self-Study:
- Files saved on the user's computer
- URL links
- Planning & Self Study Assessment Reports
Evidence can be added in each individual Narrative, or it can be added to the Overview section of the Self-Study, which will allow it to be used wherever possible throughout the Self-Study.
Note: When adding evidence, an error message will appear if there are any unacceptable symbols in the evidence title. This is to ensure that there no server error issues, or errors when exporting the self-study.
For more detailed information on uploading and utilizing evidence in your Self-Study report, please see the article linked below:
Adding and Managing Evidence in a Self-Study
Updating Narrative Status
Planning & Self Study supports the ability to maintain multiple versions of any individual Narrative. With this functionality, users can edit the Narrative text in a non-destructive way, as long as they make sure to save their changes with a different working status. The available statuses are as follows:
- Not Started
- Drafting
- Ready for Review
- In Review
- Ready for Revision
- Revising
- Complete
Once the Narrative is saved for the first time, the status will automatically update to "Drafting". All further status changes will be made manually by users during content entry.
For more detailed information on managing the Narrative History statuses, please see the article linked below:
Narrative History and Status Changes
Adding Commentary to the Self-Study
The Self-Study report in Planning & Self Study is a collaborative artifact - there may be many users working within the same areas. To facilitate communication across all content contributors, Planning & Self Study features a Comments tool. To add comments, a user would select the text box symbol.
From the interface that appears on the right, commentary can be added. A historical record of all comments made to that point would also appear. Users also have the option to mark as Resolved comments that they themselves have made.