What is the At-a-Glance Assessment Cycle Summary Report?
The At-a-Glance Assessment Cycle Summary Report provides quantitative data on the measures and corresponding findings entered in a workspace. If you chose to include the relevant fields/drop-down menus in your assessment plan template, you will be able to view statistics on the outcomes and measures included in a given cycle: whether benchmarks were met, not met, or exceeded; ratio of direct and indirect measures included in your assessment cycle; and types of measure levels used.
From this report, you can also drill down to see the corresponding qualitative data (outcomes and their mapping, measures’ descriptions, timeline, personnel, summary of findings, etc.) you chose to collect from each participating area:
-
You can view aggregated information for the entire institution (all participating areas in your hierarchy) or disaggregated information for specific areas only
-
You may choose to include linked actions in this report, too, for a comprehensive view of your process
-
You can filter by outcomes alignment
Please note that the screenshots in this guide represent the default setup for workspaces, so you may see different terms or data points in your report based on how your institution customized.
Click the expand icon on the video's lower right side for larger and fullscreen viewing. Click "CC" to access closed captions.
Accessing the At-a-Glance Assessment Cycle Summary Report
If you see a variation of this section (highlighted below) on the left side of your AMS account’s home page...
...You have At-a-Glance Reporting access!
If you do NOT see a “At-a-Glance Oversight” on the left side of your homepage, contact your institution’s AMS Coordinator.
Steps to Run Assessment Cycle Summary Reports in At-a-Glance Oversight:
1. From your homepage, click on the link beneath At-a-Glance Oversight (screen shot above)
a. Your link will depend on the organizational level for which you have reporting oversight (e.g., if your
account has reporting permissions across the entire institution, the link will be name of the institution. If you have permissions over a specific college, department or program within the institution, the link will be specific to those areas)
2. You should now see three (3) categories (screen shot below): Summary Reports, Goals and Outcome Alignment Reports, and Assessment Cycle and Operational Plan Reports
a. From the Assessment Cycle and Operational Plan Reports area, select the Assessment Cycle Summary link
3. Select the workspace on which you would like to report from the Select Workspace dropdown menu
4. Then, select the Assessment Plan cycle from the Select Assessment Plan drop-down menu
a. Because you are free to change assessment plans from cycle to cycle, this report is run one cycle at a time; however, you can export this report offline (more details below) and aggregate those offline documents to create a longitudinal view of this data over time.
5. Next, select the Participating Areas of your hierarchy which you would like to include in your report:
a. You may choose either All Participating Areas in your Administrative Domain to run a comprehensive
report on all Participating Areas in your domain or A Subset of Participating Areas in your Administrative Domain to selectively include on certain Participating Areas in your report.
6. You may also use the drop-down menu next to Filter by Outcome or Goal Set Alignment to filter your report to only include measures that are aligned to a specified goal set or outcome set shared across your institution, such as Strategic Plan Goals and Institution-Wide Learning Outcomes
7. Then, click the CONTINUE button at the bottom of the screen
8. On the next page, choose the info to display:
a. Selecting Only totals for [Administrative Domain] will show you only the aggregated data across your domain, but selecting Totals and Assessment Plan results for each of the ___ participating areas with access within [Administrative Domain] will show you both the aggregated totals, as well as information broken down by each Participating Area, so we recommend selecting this option.
b. Check the boxes for the appropriate Assessment Cycle – Operational Plans to include in the report
i. Please note: This option will work only if you linked your actions to your findings; if so, the report
will include the data fields found in the Operational Plan and Status Report requirements (i.e. Action, Description, Current Status, Next Steps, etc.).
ii. Your institution might have changed the requirement title and/or prompts for info based on its assessment culture and vocabulary
c. Click the CONTINUE button
9. The resulting page will display a quantitative report, which includes overall statistics and bar graphs for the entire institution, and similar disaggregated info for each participating area
a. You can view the report’s identifying information in the box at the top of the page
b. You can also use the check boxes in the Show, View, and Include categories toward the top of the page to selectively hide or show certain data
c. You can print the report, or export it to PDF or Word, by clicking on the links toward the top, right-hand side of the page
10. Select the View Assessment Cycle Detail by Outcome link (toward the left-hand side of the page) for any one participating area
11. The resulting screen will display a qualitative report, which includes text entered into the following requirements (you may have changed the requirement names) for that participating area:
i. Outcomes
ii. Assessment Plan/Measures
iii. Assessment Findings/Results
iv. If you chose to include the Operational Plan in step 8b, linked actions and their Statuses will also
appear
a. You can uncheck a box at the top of the page to exclude mapping from the report; another check box allows you to only display measures that have findings
b. You can click on the Advanced Display Options button to filter further
c. You can print this qualitative report (or export it to PDF, Word, or Excel) by clicking on the links toward the top, right-hand side of the page
Exporting the At-A-Glance Summary Report to Excel
1. For additional data manipulation options, click the Export to Excel with Options button, then click OK in the following pop-up window
2. Next:
a. Click your preferred radio button for Choose what to export:
i. If you applied any filters to your report from the previous page, you can choose The display preferences currently selected on main report to apply those filters to your Excel export
ii. Selecting All data available, no filters applied will remove any applied filters from your Excel
export
b. For Choose which participating area(s) to include:
i. If you select This participating area, you will only export the data for the presently selected participating area
ii. If you click Multiple participating areas in your administrative domain, a list of all of the participating areas in your administrative domain will appear – check the box for the highest level, and the boxes for all sub-levels will automatically be checked
Please note: red circles will appear next to any participating areas which were not enrolled in this workspace, to indicate these areas will not appear on the Excel export.
c. Then, hit the CONTINUE button
3. The result will be a downloaded Excel spreadsheet. When you open it:
a. The workspace requirements (and data entry fields) will appear across the horizontal axis
b. The list of participating areas will appear down the vertical axis
4. To combine cells, without losing information:
b. Click on the capital letter at the top of a column (above the yellow box displaying the report title and
details), which will automatically highlight all cells in that column
c. Then right-click on the same column and choose Insert
i. A new column will appear
d. In the new column, click on the first empty cell below blue header
e. Enter the following formula and hit enter:
i. =CONCATENATE(“Header”, Cell, CHAR(10), CHAR(10), Cell)
1. Please note:
a. Each comma separates the elements of the formula
b. CHAR (10) will create a line break
c. You can add many headings, line breaks, and cells
d. You can customize the elements in red (SEE EXAMPLE BELOW)
For example: if you would like to combine columns C (titled Learning Objective) and D (titled Learning Objective Description) in the screen shot above:
f. You would click on column E and insert a new column
g. In the first cell under the blue header in the new (empty) column E, you would type the following and hit enter:
=CONCATENATE(“Learning Objective”, C9, CHAR(10), CHAR(10), D9)
h. Your output would resemble the image (i.e. content in cell E9)
5. Next, click on the cell with new content (E9 in our example above)
i. Then hold the SHIFT key on the keyboard and click on the last cell in the same column
i. The entire column will be highlighted
6. In the HOME tab at the top of the Excel sheet, click the Fill button toward the right-hand side of the page, and choose Down
j. The resulting column would fill with combined text for each set of information contained in columns C and D
Frequently Asked Questions
What if I don’t have access to this report in my account?
Reporting permissions are managed by your institution’s AMS Coordinator. Please contact them to have this permission added to your account.
Can I run a report across multiple years?
AMS gives your programs the freedom to change their assessment plans from year to year- different outcomes and different measures can be included each year- and without a uniform plan template imposed by AMS across assessment cycles, each cycle must be reported on independently. However, you can export your reports for different years to Excel (following steps beginning on Page 10) and then combine those exported documents to create a longitudinal view of your assessment data.
What is a workspace?
A workspace is a centralized, transparent repository for content about outcomes assessment and continuous improvement or related processes such as program review, strategic planning, or accreditation self-study. A workspace is structured in a way that guides users to enter different types of content into specific requirements.
What is a participating area?
A participating area is any group within your institution that is responsible for entering content into a workspace. For example, if the Accounting (B.S.) group is enrolled in a workspace, it is a participating area in that workspace. Every individual whose AMS account is affiliated with a participating area may be given access to all workspaces (or a subset of workspaces) in which the participating area is enrolled.