Self Study

The Self Study feature enables Institutions to collect evidence and collaborate among self study contributors and other key stakeholders through a centralized workspace, enabling easy preparation and submission of self studies.

For many assessment professionals, accreditation and program review can be arduous. Accreditation is often seen as a “one-and-done ‘till next time” initiative rather than an opportunity to elevate the Institution, demonstrate institutional effectiveness, and positively impact student success regularly. The Self Study feature streamlines the self study preparation process, ensuring Institutions spend less time searching for evidence and formatting reports.

To learn about self study and its benefits and for a walkthrough within the platform, check out the self Study video walkthrough!

How can Self Study Help?

• Collaborate with designated contributors on preparing self studies for submission.

• Design a review process to ensure narratives and associated documents are accurate and ready for submission.

• Tag and approve evidence by standard to be embedded into a self study.

• Maintain local copies of regional and programmatic self studies in one centralized location for visibility.

• Provide transparency into the evidence demonstrating that an Institution is meeting its mission to serve Students.

• Centralize other existing internal assessment and program review processes, improving time-consuming data collection and reporting.

What are the Benefits of Self Study?

• Work Efficiently in Predefined Templates: As part of Onboarding, HelioCampus will populate an Institution’s platform instance with the self study templates for each accreditation body they report to, based on the accreditation timelines.

• Easily Collaborate with Contributors: Through permissions, Institutions can enable self-study team members and contributors to create content promptly through a familiar, easy-to-use, collaborative content editing experience.

• Quickly Collect Evidence: HelioCampus provides a “one-stop-shop” evidence repository for accreditation and other reviews, including program reviews and programmatic self-studies. This centralized library allows Institutions to assign users the ability to tag evidence by self study standard, substandard, and keywords to sections of reports. This makes it easy to quickly identify relevant content and evidence for a self study.

• Seamlessly Embed Content and Evidence: With the click of a button, evidence and artifacts collected and tagged in the Evidence Bank are easily pulled into the appropriate section(s) of a self study.

• Maintain Version Control: If evidence changes along the way, Institutions only need to swap out the old version and add the revised evidence to the repository. Wherever that evidence is already linked in the self study, it will be automatically updated without manually changing anything within the narrative, saving time and effort.

• Export Options with Flexibility: Seamlessly export a comprehensive package of the documentation and curated content based on the accreditor's requirements.

Getting Started

Considerations

• Self Study or Data Collection? Institutions can consult with HelioCampus on whether they should conduct a self study or a data collection:

  • Self Study: Performing a self study ensures Institutions spend less time searching for evidence and formatting reports. Completed self studies provide preformatted PDF exports with easy-to-read self study data needed during accreditation.

  • Data Collection: Performing a data collection produces reports by program or unit and one complete report of all form inputs by both. Data collection reports can then be reviewed and formatted for data needed during accreditation.

• Have Self Study Standards Been Added/Imported and Published? Standard sets are imported during implementation or manually created post-implementation.

• Has Evidence Been Added/Imported and Aligned to The Standards? The Evidence Bank stores evidence that can be related to self study outcomes.

• Standardized Accreditor Self Study Template or Custom Self Study? Institutions can consult with HelioCampus on whether to use a standardized accreditor self study template or provide HelioCampus with an Institution-tailored self study template via Microsoft Word.

• HelioCampus-Led Self Study Training? If the Institution has not received self study training from HelioCampus, submit a support ticket to schedule a training session. Learn more about submitting support tickets.

Self Study Process

1. Submit a Support Ticket to Start a Self Study: Provide HelioCampus with the completed standardized accreditor template or the Institution’s custom Institution-tailored template created. Once received, HelioCampus will build the self study and advise the Instutution when ready.

   1. If HelioCampus training on the Self Study feature is needed, submit a secondary support ticket to request a training session.

2. Assign User Roles: Once HelioCampus has built the self study and advised that it is ready, Institutions can assign self study and evidence bank users via the Self Study Details page. User roles included in the self study process include: