Self-Study Reports

To begin working in the self-study module, click the Accreditation Self-Studies tab from the left-hand menu in your account

 

You will then see self-studies that you have either created or have been assigned to you by someone else at your institution. 

 

 

Click the Create Self-Study button in the upper right corner of the Self-Study page.

 

Give the self-study a name.  The general format is to use the year for which the study is created, followed by the name of the accreditation report. Select the template of the self-study to use from the second dropdown menu, and then click Create. If you do not see the correct self-study accreditation template available on the dropdown menu, please reach out to the Support team at support@watermarkinsights.com.

 

 

 

Click on the area for which you wish to add content from the left-hand navigation pane. Content will be added in two steps: 1) Adding attachments from the Manage Evidence tab; and 2) Adding the narrative text with links to attachments in the Write Narrative tab.

 

 

To add attachments: Click Manage Evidence, then click Add Evidence. 

 

 

You will be able to either add a link connecting a URL to the standard, upload an attachment from your computer, or upload Assessment Plan reports from Planning & Self-Study.

 

After adding your attachments, they will show up in a list. The status will change from Not Embedded to Embedded when the attachment is linked to a narrative section. You can use the 3 dots to the right of the attachment to rename it if you choose. Click Done when you are finished adding attachments.

 

To add narrative, click Write Narrative, then fill in the text box with your narrative for that standard. If you click the paperclip symbol on the right-hand side of the page, you can see the attachments you uploaded previously. Highlight the text you wish to be linked, then click the paperclip symbol to the right of the attachment you want to link.

 

 

 

To add comments, use the text box symbol. Only the user who adds a comment can resolve it. Also, administrators can cancel out of commenting or replying by clicking the Cancel button. When a user clicks “comment”, the Cancel button will be enabled before the user begins typing.

 

 

 

 

From the overview page, you can manage the attachments you’ve uploaded, sharing them to other standards in the self-study, as well as customizing the overall self-study structure. You can also export the self-study from the overview page.

 

To manage the attachments, click Manage Evidence.

 

 

You will then see the list of attachments that have been added to various standards in the self-study. To share an attachment with additional standards, click the Share With Standards link, and you will be able to select additional standards to which to distribute the attachment. You can then link that attachment in the narrative for those standards as well.

 

 

To customize your self-study, click the Settings button in the upper right of the Overview page.

 

 

Click the 3 dots in the upper right, then click Customize.

 

From this page, you can rename or delete sections or individual standards from your self-study using the 3 dots to the right of each section or standard. In this way, you can make sure the self-study only includes the areas for which you are reporting and providing data You can also use the Add Standard button to add new areas that are not included in the provided template.

 

Exporting the self-study is accomplished from the Overview page. Click Export in the upper right corner, then select the options for the export.

 

 

 

Start by selecting whether you wish to export to PDF or Word.

 

Then select the appropriate evidence option. The standard selection is the second choice, “Download all evidence with this export”.

 

The third option selection allows you to choose whether to export the entire self-study with all its standards, or select only certain standards to include in the export.

 

An administrator may need to export a self-study for the purpose of formatting in Word and saving as a PDF, while preserving offline links to evidence and ultimately packaging the documents on a Flash drive.  The steps to accomplish this are as follows:

 

Step 1)  Export self-study in Word and choose Option 2 for Evidence ("Download all evidence with this report".   This will create a zipped file with the report and evidence attached. 

 

Step 2)  Unzip report and links (NOTE: links will not work offline unless the files are unzipped or extracted.) 

 

Step 3)  Make formatting changes in Word and save file as a PDF in the same folder with the unzipped evidence.   

 

Step 4)  Zip PDF file and evidence together (these can be saved on a flash drive). The files must be unzipped/extracted again for links to work. 

Report administrators can now create a copy of a self-study so that they don’t have to recreate the report each time they’re up for review.  The option to create a copy of a self-study is accessed by clicking the icon with the three dots to the right of the self-study title. You may find this particularly useful if you need to use a prior self-study document as the basis for authoring a new one, or if you need to create a copy and modify parts of it in order to publish a version with less sensitive data than the original submitted version.

 

 

Administrators will see a modal window where they can enter the title for the copy of the self-study.

 

Modal window to enter the title for the copy of the self-study

 

If any evidence files contain invalid names due to special symbols (?:\"*<>|.), the system will remove those symbols from the names of those evidence files when creating the copy of the file. 

 

Administrators will see a card for the new self-study as soon as they click the Copy button, but the card will be disabled until the system finishes copying the data from the original self-study.

 

 

All data in the new self-study will mirror the copied self-study except the narrative statuses, comments, websites and previous narrative versions. The narrative status “Drafting” will be displayed for the standards with the narrative data.