In 2021, the Research and Planning Group for California Community Colleges (the RP Group) conducted a survey of institutional research, planning, and effectiveness (IRPE) offices in the California Community Colleges (CCC) system. The purpose of this survey was to: (1) Identify key research and planning priorities and activities of the IRPE…

In 2019, the Research and Planning Group for California Community Colleges (RP Group) conducted a survey of institutional research, planning, and effectiveness (IRPE) offices in the California Community College system. The purpose of this survey was to: (1) Identify key research and planning priorities and activities of the IRPE offices; (2)…

The demands on and expectations of Institutional Research (IR) departments at colleges and universities have continued to expand over the years, yet there have been no studies on cost effective ways to develop and maintain the knowledge and skills needed by professionals in the field. Using a survey and social network analysis, this study explored…

As higher education institutions in the United States strive to maximize their use of resources to better support students, it is critical for professionals to make data-informed decisions. Most institutions are currently gathering an abundance of data from multiple sources, which provides a good opportunity for functional units, divisions, and…

Distributed leadership has been explored internationally as a leadership model that will promote and advance excellence in learning and teaching in higher education. This paper presents an assessment of how effectively distributed leadership was enabled at five Australian institutions implementing a collaborative teaching quality development…

This article presents results of a study the author recently conducted on the role of traditional institutional research (IR) offices in support of accreditation activities and institutional effectiveness. The purpose of the study was to confirm or disconfirm the utility of a theoretical model developed by Brittingham, O'Brien, and Alig (2008) of…

Online education is becoming an increasingly important component of higher education. The Sloan Foundation 2010 Survey of Online Learning reports that more than 30% of all students take at least one online course during their college career. Because of this, attention is now turning to the quality of student outcomes that this instructional method…

This article provides insights from a 2-year, cross-site evaluation of state funded developmental education sites and serves as a focus article for response by those sites. Receiving grants from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB), nine sites (5 community colleges and 4 universities) implemented innovative developmental education…

Many teacher education institutions share a concern about assessing their preservice teachers' knowledge, skills, and dispositions related to teaching diverse P-12 students. This case study describes the iterative and sometimes difficult process involved in the development of a diversity awareness survey at one institution. The survey discussed…

Most institutional research (IR) practitioners lack access to direct measures of longitudinal student learning, let alone assessment instruments systematically embedded into the curriculum that yield representative cognitive gain data controlling for student motivation. Typically, measures of student learning growth rest on findings from survey…

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems can represent one of the largest investments of human and financial resources by a higher education institution. They also bring a significant process reengineering aspect to the institution and the associated implementation project through the integration of compiled industry best practices into the…

Integrating institutional research, outcomes assessment, program review, strategic planning, and accreditation can be a powerful means of creating a culture of evidence-based decision making and continuous improvement. This study examined how this "integrated" model is organized in practice, how such offices began, why this approach was chosen,…

Background: This article serves as a conclusion to a TCR special issue devoted to understanding the impact of the Spencer Foundation's Research Training Grant (RTG) initiative. We examine four case reports prepared by scholars at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of California at Los Angeles…

Local Government Employers (LGE) was created by the Local Government Association (LGA) in April 2006. The aim of LGE is to work with local authorities, regional employers and other bodies to lead and create solutions on pay, pensions and the employment contract, to ensure the provision of excellent and affordable local services. The LGE…

The vast amount of research conducted on student persistence over the past thirty years is indicative of the continuing and evolving interest in retention of students. Framed through multiple perspectives, this retention research is driven by the fact that more students leave institutions without graduating, year after year. Much more than an…