How UTRGV streamlined assessment workflows
As institutions work to improve assessment processes, reduce administrative burden, and support continuous improvement efforts, many are reevaluating legacy reporting systems and disconnected workflows. In this edition of our Planning & Self-Study in Action series, we highlight how The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley is using Watermark to simplify assessment reporting, improve consistency across reporting cycles, and create a more user-friendly experience for faculty and staff.
This story builds on themes explored in our previous P&SS in Action blog, Maximizing time efficiency with Planning & Self-Study, where institutional leaders shared how standardized workflows and automation features can significantly reduce manual effort across assessment processes. Make sure to check back for Part 3: Driving Cultural Transformation with Planning & Self-Study.
A lot of users who have been around a few years compare the previous system to P&SS and will make it known that P&SS is much more effective. Once users are used to the navigation process and can access the different aspects of the template, then their experience with the system is generally positive.
One feature that makes P&SS stand out is that outcomes and measures populate automatically from one year to the next. Users don’t have to re-enter details about their measures and data collection process if they are reusing their measures from the last cycle. This means that rubrics, surveys, assignment prompts, and any other relevant documents are carried over, helping users avoid repeating manual data entry.
Additionally, having a standard reporting template with a professional layout and a consistent navigation click-path helps faculty and staff become familiar with what to expect from one cycle to the next. More importantly, it enables our institutional support team to continuously improve training materials and resources, such as sample reports and vignettes, to better assist faculty and staff with assessment reporting and documentation.
Having measures and supporting documentation carried over from one cycle to the next partly saves time, but is especially helpful in reducing the potential frustration that people can experience during the reporting process, which I think is important given the baggage that comes with “assessment” sometimes.
It definitely helps that historical reports are easily accessible for both new and returning users. If units or programs rotate through different measures from one cycle to the next, they will either open a prior report and copy information or re-attach supporting documentation. Other units in a similar situation will not remove a measure and simply report that results were not collected, this way it carries over automatically.
