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Program Prioritization training under way

September 23, 2015
Members of the Program Prioritization Academic and Administrative Task Forces spent two days in early September training on program evaluation and getting to know each other.

Members of the Program Prioritization Academic and Administrative Task Forces spent two days in early September training on program evaluation
and getting to know each other.

More than 200 members of the NIU university community have taken part in Program Prioritization training in recent weeks.

Members of the Academic and Administrative task forces spent two days with trainer Larry Goldstein in early September, solidifying processes and establishing their own ground rules for the work ahead. Among those determinations were establishment of a task force charter and rules, decision protocols and labeling of prioritization categories.

The combined task forces voted to require at least 85 percent attendance at any meeting involving program rankings, and at least 85 percent agreement on program ranking decisions.

They also voted to label the ranking categories as follows:

  • Candidate for enhanced resources
  • Continue with no change in resources
  • Continue with reduced resources
  • Requires transformation
  • Subject to additional review; candidate for phase-out
Program Prioritization Training Team Co-Chair Jason Rhode walks program authors through the steps needed to complete a program narrative. Rhode and Co-Chair Cindy Kozumplik had worked with more than 200 program authors by the end of the first week of training.

Program Prioritization Training Team Co-Chair Jason Rhode walks program authors through the steps needed to complete a program narrative.

The task forces will continue meeting throughout the fall to develop scoring protocols and establish scoring norms, and to undertake further training for scoring in the Prioritization Plus system.

Meanwhile, program authors (those responsible for drafting narrative responses and providing supplemental data) are undergoing both face-to-face and online training in the use of Prioritization Plus templates.

At the 90-minute, hands-on workshops, authors are learning the basics of how to login and access institutionally provided data, as well as how to enter a program write-up and provide supplemental data. Sixty-minute online workshops provide authors an opportunity to view all the same steps and ask questions about the process.

Feedback from workshop participants has been overwhelmingly positive, with 88 percent saying they feel better prepared to begin using the Prioritization Plus data platform after receiving training.