Methods of Collecting Strategic Planning Data

The platform enables institutional and individual college stakeholders to advance
their strategic goals by linking goals to outcomes and identifying appropriate stakeholders to provide data to support these goals across the Institution. While current platform functionality is optimized for assessment workflows, many Institutions have successfully adapted the platform to align strategic objectives with measurable outcomes. The platform leverages the Data Collection & Workflows features and curriculum mapping functionality, combined with reporting and analytics capabilities, to help Institutions articulate and disseminate strategic information and track goal achievement across different levels over time.

Collecting Data with Heliocampus

Data Collections and Workflows

The platform’s Data Collection & Workflows feature allows Institutions to design templates and workflows that guide departments, colleges, and units in aligning their goals and outcomes with broader institutional planning objectives. The platform supports collecting key information, such as program and student outcome data, related strategic plan goals, associated measures, targets, results, and action plans, through customizable forms. Progress is tracked through an intuitive administrative dashboard with real-time status updates. Options to mark specific fields as required to ensure critical information is included and feedback provided through a workflow designed to align with the Institution's process. Collected data can be seamlessly exported via built-in reports or data sets, enabling integration into broader strategic planning efforts.

Learn More: Data Collection

Curriculum Mapping

The curriculum mapping functionality enables programs to align the student learning outcomes with broader institutional or organizational outcome sets. This alignment can be viewed at multiple levels, allowing administrators to examine data in aggregate or disaggregate by college, school, program, course, course section, topic-level objectives, and even rubric criteria. This functionality supports vertical alignment, tracking how goals are addressed from the course level up through programs and the institution, and horizontal alignment across departments or colleges.

Learn more: Getting Started: Curriculum Mapping

Evidence Bank and Self-Study

The Evidence Bank enables Institutions to organize and tag uploaded evidence and artifacts to self-study criteria and custom keywords. This feature can also support strategic planning by allowing evidence to be linked directly to specific institutional goals. Users can tag relevant materials to associated objectives by creating a strategic planning self-study template. Strategic plan goals can be housed in the platform, and prompts can be assigned to units, departments, or colleges to guide them in demonstrating how they are developing, meeting, or exceeding expectations, using rubrics or other evaluation tools. Additionally, data collected in other platform areas can be indexed and tagged as evidence, allowing Institutions to build a comprehensive, goal-aligned evidence base that supports ongoing planning and evaluation.

Learn More:

Self Study

Evidence Bank

Considerations

When choosing a method of collecting data for strategic planning, it can be helpful to consider the following before deciding on a method:

• What type of reports or final exports are desired? Learn more:

  • Report Library

  • Data Sets

• If a robust workflow is required for your planning process.

• If the Institution process requires users to respond to question prompts, and if yes, whether those prompts are qualitative or quantitative.