RUNNING HEAD: PLANNING AN ASSESSMENT 1

Planning an Assessment

Luchanna Dix

Wright State University

Running Head: Planning an Assessment 2

I chose to do my assessment on the satisfaction rate for campus tours given by the

Undergraduate Admissions Office. Currently, this office does not do any type of assessments

regarding this process. The purpose of the campus tour is to allow potential or, in some cases,

already committed students and their family members to view the campus, to help them

determine whether Wright State (or any campus) is a good “fit” for the student. The purpose of

the satisfaction assessment is to determine if the campus tour positively or negatively influences

individuals to choose Wright State University (WSU) as their college of choice, and to what

extent the tour experience influences their decision-making process.

The goal of the Undergraduate Admissions Office is to attract, maintain, and increase

student enrollment. Their mission statement falls under the auspices of its parent division of

Enrollment Services Management and WSU, i.e., to “Transform the lives of the students and the

communities we serve.” As the “first face” of the institution that students and their families

encounter, it is imperative that a good impression of the school and its amenities are given.

Surveys have shown that a satisfactory campus tour is many times, the deciding factor in a

student and their family’s decision to attend a college or university. It is important then, that

they are being shown areas of campus life that represent their interests. Also, it is important that

the representatives providing this service make the tour fun, exciting, and informative for

participants.

Noel-Levitz (2012) notes that there are several benefits derived from assessing student

satisfaction in higher education. Two of these benefits are: 1) Consumer theory indicates that

consumer input is important to ensure customer needs are being met; and 2) student satisfaction

scales can provide administrators with valuable information concerning academic environment,

academic support services, ancillary services, and many others that may, in turn, affect a school’s
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reputation, recruitment, retention rate, and even alumni relations. Another reason to assess

student satisfaction is that the results can be used as a necessary part of a comprehensive

institutional assessment plan. The data gathered from these types of assessments can then be

used to affect policies and programs on campus. In my proposed assessment, the data could be

used to reshape the campus tour process to achieve a higher level of satisfaction (if determined

necessary) to increase enrollment levels.

The stakeholders in the assessment plan would be the students and their families, the

undergraduate admissions office, the Enrollment Services Management Division, the Office of

the Provost and the University. This would also include all the programs at the university,

because they are all affected by student enrollment. Student enrollment revenue is the driving

force behind the success or failure of any institution, and especially for Wright State in its

current climate. Ms. Jen McCamis, Director of Undergraduate Admissions, believes that the

admissions office should be doing assessments of this process would be willing to invest in the

process. Any approvals for assessment would be granted at her level.

Students currently register for campus tours using an on-line reservation system. They

are grouped (to the greatest extent possible) by Major. Once they arrive on tour day, the groups

visit the following places: Student Union, Hamilton Hall, Student Success Center, Rike Hall,

Allyn Hall, Oelman Hall, The Woods (residential housing), the Dunbar library, Russ Engineering

Center, JC Joshi Research Center, and the outside of the Nutter Center. Students are also shown

how to navigate from one part of campus to the other by using the underground tunnel system. It

is not known who designed the tour routes, or why. It was stated that this route was the one has

always been used in recent years. Since no assessment measures are in place currently, there is

no information available as to whether the locations being visited are important to the students
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and their families, or whether these locations have any direct bearing on the participant’s

decision to choose (or not) this institution. As previously stated, the assessment type would be a

satisfaction assessment, quantitative in nature, as the data we want to measure deals with the

number of participants whose decision to come to Wright State was either changed or solidified

because of taking the tour. The survey could also include at least one question that would

represent the participant’s perception of how effective they believed the tour was in making their

final decision (indirect assessment). Results of an assessment could provide data that may

suggest other locations should be added, or locations currently being visited should be removed

from the campus tour as points of interest, to make a greater positive impact on decision-making

for the participants.

The admissions office has a computer operating system (Qualtrics) available to it that

could be used to provide the initial survey to students and to email the follow-up questionnaire to

students once the tour has been completed. It can also be programmed to collect and evaluate the

resulting data and compare the differences between the initial questionnaire and the follow-up

questionnaire. To do this, a brief questionnaire would be made available to students on the same

page where they sign up for the tour concerning their level of interest in attending WSU. Once

the tour has been taken, the system would email them the follow-up questionnaire, to collect the

data concerning their increased (or decreased) level of interest in attending WSU. The post-tour

survey could be a bit longer in length giving participants an opportunity to make any additional

comments concerning what should be included or deleted from the tour that would influence

their decision-making process. Ideally, it would be emailed to the participants within five (5)

business days, while the visit and its’ impact would still be fresh in the participant’s minds.

Since the system would already have demographic data concerning, gender, age, and ethnic
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group derived from the participant’s application, data collected could also be analyzed to

determine any correlation between those data items and the decision to attend WSU. It should be

noted that for those participants who would attend a tour on a walk-in basis, the demographic

data may not be available. However, the number of these participants should have a negligible

effect on the data, and the system could be coded to allow for these anomalies as well as overall

participation rates, since the system would have the data that represents how many surveys were

sent and how many were returned. The results of the data would be composed as a computer-

generated report and analyzed by the director of the admissions office, (or her designees) and

tour schedule adjustments could be made accordingly. Since no assessments are currently being

conducted, it would be suggested that the data be collected and analyzed at the end of each

academic aid year as a minimum.

The first stage in planning an assessment of this type would be to select and

inform the key players that will be involved in the process. At a minimum, this should include

staff members, since they will be directly involved in the process and affected by any outcomes,

a member of upper level management, and a member from the Institutional Research office,

since they will be integral in helping to decide which data to access and in helping to analyze the

results. It may also be helpful to include an individual from outside of the department on the

assessment team, to provide an unbiased opinion of the process. Once the committee has been

formed, decisions must be made regarding the type of questions that will need to be asked that

will provide useful feedback that will be useful to the team.

Since the decision to attend a college or university is largely based on feelings or

perceptions, it will be important to design survey instruments that contain questions that address

these feelings. Answers could be based on a Likert scale. An example of a question could be,
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“How satisfied were you with your tour experience”: 1) extremely dissatisfied; 2) dissatisfied; 3)

neither dissatisfied or satisfied; 4) satisfied; 5) extremely satisfied. The survey instruments

would also need to contain some open-ended questions that would allow the participant to state

why they answered the question on the way they did, and what could be done to increase their

satisfaction level(s). As mentioned above, two survey instruments, would be required: one

before the tour and one after (pre- and post-). This would allow for a comparison of data, which

would be used to gauge the impact on participant’s decision-making that the tour may have. In

addition, there would need to be some questions contained in the post-tour survey addressing the

personality (friendliness, knowledge, etc.) of the tour guide. This would help assess what types

of personalities are preferred as tour guides, and, would provide opportunities for mentoring and

training of these employees for improvement in service patterns.

The Admissions office has data available to them that would allow Institutional Research

to pull representative data concerning the current percentages of students who came on campus

tours and then decided to (or not) to come to WSU. A separate survey could be done with these

students to determine if the campus tour had any bearing on their decision to attend; or a focus

group could be conducted with the students who chose to come to WSU, to determine what the

deciding factors were in their decision-making process. The resulting data from either of these

processes could be used in two ways: 1) to help the committee decide what characteristics of the

tour needs to be focused on for improvement and; 2) to make a comparison of this data and the

data resulting after the assessment process is finished to benchmark any improvement or lack

thereof.

The director will need to decide who will analyze the data once received. It would be

good to have a team of volunteers, perhaps a group of students from WSU that are not affiliated
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with the Admissions Office to perform this function. This would to a long way to ensure

reliability and validity of the process. Students could be incentivized in some small way for their

participation. The Admissions director stated that they currently have an incentive program that

could be used for this type of effort.

Once the questions have been determined, the instruments designed, and a timeline

established, a “beta” test, would be performed to determine if the instruments produce the type of

information anticipated, or whether they need to be adjusted. Once again, the test instruments

could be launched through the Qualtrics system, where volunteers could take the surveys. It

could also be suggested that the trial test be performed during the summer semester which is

usually much slower paced and would allow for the data to be analyzed and the instruments

“tweaked” before final launch. This would dictate a 90-day process time for the assessment to

be completed. If the results are favorable, the launch of the finalized assessments could be done

for the fall semester. After the fall semester is complete and the post-tour data received and

analyzed, the data would be used to determine what, if any improvements needed to be made.

First and foremost, the results would be discussed with the Admissions Office staff, to

create an action plan to improve services provided (if applicable). The results of the data would

then be passed to the Director of Enrollment Services via written report. It would show whether

any additional funding or personnel are needed; the satisfaction level of the tour participants, and

the number of participants whose opinions were affected by the tour. Other offices (Finance,

Provost, and President’s) could be provided an executive summary with the additional data being

made available upon request. This information could then be incorporated into the yearly budget

process or used to establish annual process improvement goals. If results are highly favorable, it
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could also give upper management notice that the services provided by the Admissions Office is

invaluable as it relates to being integral in the process of increasing revenue.

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References

Edens, David. (2012). The value of student satisfaction assessment at for-profit higher education

institutions. White paper. Retrieved from www.noellevitz.com.

Henning, Gavin W., and Roberts, Darby. (2016). Student affairs assessment: Theory to practice.

(1st edition). Virginia: Stylus Publishing, LLC.

Executive Summary: Office of Admissions Customer Satisfaction Survey (2006). White Paper.

Retrieved from:

http://legacy.bluegrass.kctcs.edu/fileadmin/files_fa/IR_Surveys/Admissions_

EXECUTIVE_SUMMARY.pdf