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NEW YORK— May 18, 2020– Watermark, a pioneer in educational intelligence, is pleased to welcome one of its newest partners, Fayetteville Technical Community College. Accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and a member of the North Carolina Community College System, FTCC has selected to use the direct connection between Watermark’s next-generation assessment planning and outcomes measurement solutions in order to more easily leverage its student learning outcomes data to inform institutional planning efforts. With this innovative data integration, the College will be able to automatically surface assessment data results to more easily demonstrate evidence of learning in plans and identify improvement actions.
Coupled with supporting its upcoming accreditation, FTCC chose Watermark in order to systematize and digitize its institutional assessment processes. Focused on increasing student success and using data to drive meaningful improvements, FTCC looks to Watermark to increase efficiencies and create an even more holistic integration of institutional effectiveness processes on campus, including: assessment planning, academic program assessment and review, student learning outcomes assessment, non-academic assessment, as well as reporting on its Quality Enhancement Plan and accreditation efforts. The institution plans to leverage Watermark to break down data silos, reduce manual data entry and redundancies, and provide more longitudinal transparency around plans, goals, outcomes, and results.
In addition to centralizing assessment, the College will use Via by Watermark to: 1) measure and ensure student learning proficiency in course, program, and institutional student learning outcomes, 2) centralize their assessment data collection, and 3) prepare institutional performance reports that will increase transparency across campus and fulfill SACSCOC accreditation reporting requirements. With Via by Watermark, FTCC will:
Because FTCC has also chosen to use Watermark Planning & Self-Study, the company’s next-gen assessment and accreditation management solution — which features a powerful data architecture that allows an institution to leverage its data from across the platform — the College can take advantage of a data integration that surfaces rubric-based assessment data results in Watermark Planning & Self-Study to more easily demonstrate evidence of learning in assessment plans and identify improvement actions. With this data integration, FTCC will be able to track where and how outcomes are being assessed, pinpoint gaps in curriculum, and identify and monitor the effectiveness of improvement actions — all while being able to generate SACSCOC accreditation reports from this work within a single, centralized system.
By being able to pull in assessment results collected through rubrics and align them to different planning measures, the institution will harness data that is based on the assessment of actual student work — a direct measure of learning that captures levels of achievement on specific learning outcomes. Saving time and effort, program administrators can more quickly drill into and aggregate this data for reflection, analysis, and action planning each cycle. These assessment results are now stored directly within the assessment plan, eliminating any duplicate or manual data entry and facilitating up-to-date evidence of student learning and institutional effectiveness for accreditation.
With Watermark’s ability to streamline data collection, scoring, and reporting, FTCC can gather results and interpret data on learning outcomes achievement at both the programmatic and institutional levels.
“The quality of teaching and learning is greatly valued here at FTCC, and we already have strong processes in place, said Dr. J. Larry Keen, President of Fayetteville Technical Community College. “We understand the interconnectedness of assessment, teaching, and learning, and with Watermark, we’ll be able to streamline those processes further so that we can answer essential questions about the success of our programs and courses. We’ll be expanding our abilities to assess student learning and gather meaningful data on outcomes, while also giving our students an opportunity to better track their learning growth. We look forward to having the centralized educational intelligence needed to make informed decisions that improve student and institutional outcomes.”
“We’re honored to have FTCC as part of the Watermark Community. In using Watermark Planning & Self-Study and Via by Watermark, the institution will continue fostering a positive culture of assessment across campus, and we look forward to supporting those efforts. We remain intent on tackling core issues around data integration on campus, supporting better reporting and analytics, and helping institutions like FTCC make data-informed improvements to student and institutional outcomes,” said Kevin Michielsen, Watermark’s CEO.
The mission of the North Carolina Community College System is to open the door to high-quality, accessible educational opportunities that minimize barriers to post-secondary education, maximize student success, develop a globally and multi-culturally competent workforce, and improve the lives and well-being of individuals. Founded in 1961, FTCC now serves more than 36,000 students annually, offering over 280 occupational, technical, general education, college transfer, and continuing education programs. It is the fourth largest community college in the state, and boasts one of the largest Continuing Education departments. Located adjacent to Fort Bragg, the college has provided education to the military since 1961.
Contact:
Victoria Guzzo
Corporate Communications
vguzzo@watermarkinsights.com