Evaluation And Assessment #10
10. A process is in place and followed for the assessment of stakeholder (e.g., learners, faculty, staff) satisfaction with the online program.
Deficient Developing Accomplished Exemplary
Our surveys of students, alumni, internship supervisors, and employers provide us with data to inform our strategic planning and evaluation process. Surveys are run via Qualtrics.
Graduating Student Exit Surveys
A few weeks after each semester ends, the School solicits feedback from new graduates through an exit survey. These surveys allow us to assess student satisfaction with the School’s curriculum, career resources, advising, and administrative support, and to identify areas in need of improvement. The surveys also provide us with input regarding student involvement in professional associations and other extracurricular activities, such as the Student Research Journal and the Library 2.0 Worldwide Virtual Conference series.
Exit survey results are discussed annually at faculty retreats and are used to help guide our program development decisions. We publish a summary of exit survey results on our website. See:
Alumni Surveys
In addition to the graduating student exit surveys, we collect data from alumni through our alumni survey, which we send out once a year. See alumni survey results reported on our Program Performance page.
This online survey gives our alumni the opportunity to reflect on their education after they have been in the field. Data gathered from the alumni surveys enables us to discover the types of environments in which graduates are working, whether the skills they brought with them helped them succeed, and how long it took them to find a job.
Survey results also help us track trends in employment to ensure that the School’s curriculum remains relevant and to help the School anticipate subtle shifts in the job market.
Employer Surveys
In 2012, we conducted our first survey of employers who have hired our alumni. The survey was repeated in 2016 and 2019.
Survey results enable us to assess the strengths of iSchool graduates as perceived by employers and also to assess areas in which we need to strengthen the curriculum.
See the results of our 2019 employer survey.
Internship Supervisor Surveys
Another group that provides beneficial feedback regarding our curriculum is our internship supervisors. We regularly rely on their input to improve these structured field experiences, which are one of the elective choices available to our MLIS students; and a required class for our MARA students.
At the end of each semester, we invite all internship supervisors to complete an online survey, and an analysis of survey results informs modifications to our internship course.
In addition, in their final reports, internship students address how well prepared they thought they were for the internship and are asked to identify specific courses they felt were important to that preparation. This semi-formal data from students is also useful in our strategic planning process.
