Datadriven planning: Using assessment in strategic planning

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR S

TUDENT

SERVICES, no. 132, Winter 2010 © Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/ss.374

Adopting the practice of systematically and strategically

gathering data to inform the development and

implementation of a strategic plan will ensure its

achievement. This chapter presents a combination of

techniques for student affairs professionals to conduct

data-driven planning.

Data-Driven Planning: Using Assessment

in Strategic Planning

Marilee J. Bresciani

Data-driven planning or evidence-based decision making represents noth-

ing new in its concept. For years, business leaders have claimed they have

implemented planning informed by data that have been strategically and

systematically gathered (Banta, Jones, and Black, 2009; Bresciani, 2006;

Maki, 2004; Schuh and Associates, 2009; Suskie, 2009; Upcraft and Schuh,

1996). Therefore, it is safe to assume that the concepts that are included in

data-driven planning have been around for years. Within higher education

and student affairs, there may be less evidence of the actual practice of sys-

tematically and strategically gathering data to inform planning.

Data-driven planning is often referred to in higher education as out-

comes-based program review. The Western Association of Schools and Col-

leges (WASC) deﬁ nes outcomes-based program review as a cyclical process

for evaluating and continuously strengthening the quality and currency of

programs. The evaluation is conducted through a combination of self-eval-

uation and peer evaluation by reviewers external to the program or depart-

ment and, usually, external to the organization (Jenefsky and others, 2009).

The results of this process inform strategic planning.

For purposes of this chapter, data-driven planning is deﬁ ned as a sys-

tematic process that gathers programmatic outcomes-based assessment

data (for example, data derived from outcomes-based program review) and

merges those data with trend, forecast, and capacity data, as well as institu-

tional goals and vision. The results of this process are then used to plan

resources, policies, and program design to achieve or reﬁ ne the intended

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institutional vision and goals. For student affairs professionals, this means

that strategic planning cannot be done in isolation of university data, such

as an understanding of market demand for majors, the pool of prospective

students, and the institutional learning outcomes and core values.

Informed by these data, student affairs professionals must align each por-

tion of their divisional strategic planning with the overall values of the

university.

For the profession of student affairs, this means that results derived

from outcomes-based assessment processes inform action planning and

budgeting. This also means that as the student affairs division staff mem-

bers gather more data on how well they are meeting institutional priorities,

they can also use the same process to demonstrate achievement of their

own divisional priorities and goals. Departments within the division can

use this process to demonstrate how they are meeting division priorities as

well. This chapter provides an overview of the components of and steps to

establishing such a process.

Steps for Data-Driven Planning in Student Affairs

When organizations embark on strategic planning, key steps must be put

into place. Data-driven planning does not replace those steps; rather, it is

intended to contribute to the reﬁ nement of those steps by purposefully

integrating planning, assessment, and budgeting processes. For example,

when an organization decides through strategic planning that it will

become the ﬁ rst-choice regional provider of quality education for ﬁ rst-gen-

eration students, it begins to design goals that will help it realize that

vision. The strategic plan represents the ideal of what the institutional lead-

ership desires to achieve.

Once the strategic plan is put into place, indicators of success are artic-

ulated, and programs are often asked to illustrate how they are achieving

the goals and indicators represented by the strategic plan (Drucker, 2000;

Fullan and Scott, 2009; McClellan, 2009). The challenge here is that key

steps, discussed in this chapter, are occasionally left out in implementation.

And the result is that organizational members may become frustrated that

the organization’s vision or strategic plan is not being fully realized. In

order to address this initial challenge, it may become important for institu-

tional and divisional leadership to follow some basic steps for data-driven

planning. The intent of sharing these suggested steps is to provide institu-

tional and divisional leadership with a framework to consider as they adapt

each step, cognizant of their own institutional culture. In many cases, insti-

tutions and student affairs divisions already have many of these pieces of

data-driven planning in place; they have just not yet pulled them together

into a systematic, integrated process.

In order to aid readers with determining how they can pull their pro-

cesses together to formulate data-driven planning, the proposed steps that

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follow are intended to be used as guidelines as opposed to procedures that

must be followed in the exact order indicated. The steps are not designed

as a linear process. You may ﬁ nd, if you follow the steps in numerical order,

that when you get to, say, step 4, you may need to go back and reﬁ ne steps

2 and 3 because you realized that you were collecting data that will not

really inform your strategic plan. Or you may choose to engage in step 1

and then step 4 in that order to ﬁ gure out how to best approach steps 2 and

3. Thus, the steps are to be used as guidelines in any order that makes sense

for your division or institution. As usual, institutional and divisional lead-

ers will need to adapt these steps in accordance with their own culture,

dynamics, and resources in order to improve their data-driven planning

processes (Banta and others, 2009;

Bresciani, 2006; Maki, 2004; Schuh and

Associates, 2009; Suskie, 2009).

Step One: Establish a Strategic Plan. Many chapters in this book

discuss the importance of having a strategic plan and illustrate various

ways to accomplish it. The important piece of information to note here is

that there must be an institutionally and divisionally agreed-on strategic

plan from which to work (Bresciani, Gardner, and Hickmott, 2009;

Bresciani, 2006; Schuh and Associates, 2009). Many professionals become

frustrated when there is no agreed-on direction for their organization, and

thus, the following steps become even more challenging to implement

(Drucker, 2000; Fullan and Scott, 2009; McClellan, 2009). In an institution

that is not engaged in strategic planning and therefore lacks institutional

values and goals with which to align, this process then starts at the division

level.

Step Two: Gather Forecast and Trend Data Sometimes the best

strategic plans and the most inspiring visions and goals can go unrealized

because the planning to create those strategic goals has been done without

considering what the forecast or trend data are illustrating. Forecast and

trend data simply attempt to calculate or predict some future event or

condition. A detailed study or analysis usually informs this type of

conversation (Schuh and Associates, 2009).

The types of data used in forecasting and determining trends are typi-

cally institutionally reported. They are often collected and stored by agen-

cies outside the institution—for example, extracts from the College Board

data sets or other types of national data sets, such as those gleaned from the

Common Data Set, the National Clearinghouse, or the Integrated Post Sec-

ondary Education Data System. Trend data can also be gleaned from admis-

sions applications, the National Survey of Student Engagement, the

Community College Survey of Student Engagement, the Cooperative Insti-

tutional Research Program, the College Student Experiences Questionnaire,

or Your First College Year surveys. Years of gathering these types of data

can illustrate certain trends that can be used in informing whether your

strategic initiatives are feasible. (An example is provided later in this

section.)

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These types of data are often collected or stored at the institutional

level. The institutional research ofﬁ ce is a good place to start when looking

to access and use data that will help in forecasting and identifying trends.

If the institutional research ofﬁ ce is too busy to assist right away, and it

often is, consider contacting the Association for Institutional Research,

which has a wealth of resources to assist institutional administrators with

this type of institutional data gathering.

In gathering and using data for forecasting or determining trends, the

idea is not to become consumed by data but rather to use the data to deter-

mine if your strategic goals can be achieved. Perhaps your university vision

is to become the ﬁ rst-choice regional provider of quality education for ﬁ rst-

generation students. Using this example, your strategic plan has informed

a design to implement interventions that will aid ﬁ rst-generation students

in their success, but your current plan has no goals to change its outreach

processes and plans. In accessing admissions applications data and College

Board data, you may discover that the number of ﬁ rst-generation students

applying and being accepted by your institution is declining. This would

indicate that your vision and your corresponding strategic plan would not

be realized unless you also have some initiatives to change outreach to and

recruitment of ﬁ rst-generation students.

Before adjusting your strategic plan to focus on a change in outreach

and recruitment, you access data from the College Board to identify how

many regional students are graduating from high school, taking college

placement tests, and being identiﬁ ed as ﬁ rst generation. If you see that the

number is high, you can then determine that efforts to develop outreach

and recruitment plans may be worthwhile. However, if you discover that

the ﬁ rst-generation students graduating from high school are low in num-

bers and appear to have been decreasing, you may want to reexamine your

institutional vision altogether. Institutional and student affairs divisional

leadership could also choose to design different types of interventions that

work collaboratively with local high schools to increase the number of col-

lege-bound ﬁ rst-generation students.

Step Three: Conduct a Capacity Review. Trend data as well as

additional types of data, such as ﬁ nancial records, ﬁ nancial forecasting, and

capital assets, can also be useful in determining the institution’s capacity to

meet the strategic plan. Borrowing from the Western Association of Schools

and Colleges (2008), a capacity review determines whether an institution

has the resources to fulﬁ ll its strategic mission. In other words, can the

institution function “with clear purposes, high levels of institutional

integrity, ﬁ scal stability, and organizational structures and processes to

fulﬁ ll its purposes?” (p. 30).

Identifying meaningful data that indicate whether an institution or

division has key institutional resources, structures, and processes in place

to fulﬁ ll its institutional or divisional mission and strategic plan is impor-

tant in determining whether changes need to be made in strategic

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priorities. Consultation with the institutional research ofﬁ ce may enable

you to identify, access, and use the most appropriate data to inform your

planning.

In order to understand how to use these types of data, we return to

our example. Consider that your trend data forecast an increase in ﬁ rst-

generation graduates intending to take college entrance exams from your

regional high schools, so you know you will have plenty of students apply-

ing to your college. However, the data from the College Board also indicate

that these students will need more ﬁ nancial aid in order to attend college in

the future. Your forecast data show steadily increasing tuition, and your

capacity study reveals less available institutional and state grant aid. How

do you factor this very real scenario into your strategic planning? What

other types of data may you need to collect to make an informed

decision?

The idea behind conducting short but informative capacity reviews is

that if you are able to identify immediate limitations in the ability to pro-

vide the resources needed for realizing the strategic plan, then you may be

able to immediately adjust your strategic plan to better reﬂ ect your capac-

ity. Or you may choose to adjust the strategic plan to build capacity. The

building of capacity to achieve the strategic plan may well become a large

portion of that plan.

Step Four: Articulate Indicators of Success. Leaders who are

operationalizing their strategic plans may clearly articulate the goals

derived from the plan, yet not have clearly identified the indicators of

success that directly relate to the goals derived from the strategic plan.

Rather than just selecting indicators of success that are easy to measure,

consider starting by spending time describing what a successful strategic

plan looks like when it is implemented (Banta and others, 2009; Bresciani

and others, 2009;

Bresciani, 2006; Maki, 2004; Schuh and Associates, 2009;

Suskie, 2009).

Indicators of success “are quantiﬁ able measurements, agreed to before-

hand, that reﬂ ect the critical success factors of an organization. They help

an organization deﬁ ne and measure progress toward organizational goals”

(Reh, 2009, paras. 1, 2). Such indicators are typically gathered and dissemi-

nated at the institutional level, but what types of data should an institution

collect in order to be able to provide such indicators of success?

Returning to our example, what would it look like when your institu-

tion is the ﬁ rst-choice regional provider of quality education for ﬁ rst-gen-

eration students? The initial inclination of planners is to jump to

performance indicators that articulate expectations for numbers of admits,

persistence, graduation, and career placement rates. These indicators are

easy to measure and certainly would make sense to report in relationship

to achievement of this vision. But what else do we know about first-

generation learners? Would we also want to be able to determine how well

the environment welcomes ﬁ rst-generation learners and their families and

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guardians? How integrated are the services and interventions designed to

support these learners (Kuh and Associates, 2005)?

The idea of this step is to indicate purposefully which indicators will

be institutionally identiﬁ ed to determine success of the strategic plan (for

example, persistence rates, placement rates) and which will be gleaned

from more speciﬁ c programmatic outcomes-based assessment results (for

example, evidence of the effectiveness of various and speciﬁ c student sup-

port programs).

Step Five: Prioritize Action Plans to Meet the Strategic

Goals. Assuming that your organizational strategic plan has articulated

goals or objectives, consider prioritizing them if possible. (Chapter One

details steps for goal setting and action planning.) This will assist with

prioritizing the action plans that operationalize the strategic plan, which in

turn helps prioritize the resources that will enable the strategic plan to

come to fruition. When institutional leadership prioritizes the strategic

plan goals, faculty and staff are more likely to feel empowered in

prioritizing their investment of their own time in their action plans in order

to meet the strategic plan (Banta and others, 2009; Bresciani and others,

2009;

Bresciani, 2006; Jenefsky and others, 2009; Schuh and Associates,

2009; Suskie, 2009).

In order to prioritize decisions that align with organizational goals,

values, and strategic initiatives, criteria must be considered that will assist

in the alignment of proposed action plans to the organizational goals, val-

ues, and strategic initiatives. Although this chapter cannot anticipate the

types of criteria that may best represent various organizational structures,

the following questions, adapted from Fred McFarlane (personal commu-

nication, February, 12, 2007), former department chair of administration,

rehabilitation, and postsecondary education at San Diego State University,

may assist institutions in formulating their own criteria:

• How well does the proposed action plan ﬁ t with our organizational

goals, values, and strategic initiatives?

• Within that ﬁ t, how will the action plan beneﬁ t current students

(for example, residential students, commuters, ﬁ rst generation)?

• How will the proposed action plan affect future students (for

example, recruitment, new student populations, and their

progression from undergraduate to graduate degrees)?

• How will the proposed action plan increase the impact of the

department in relationship to the goals and sustaining objectives of

the department and the division?

• How will we know whether the proposed action plan will be

effective in increasing the impact of the department on the students?

• Does the proposed plan meet the criteria in that it is consistent with

our values and beliefs (for example, access, equity, and student

success), ﬁ nancially viable (for example, does it cover the costs, and

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can it be leveraged for continued development; note that one-shot

efforts take a great deal of time and often diffuse resources and

energy), consistent with our professional development, and

consistent with our passion and commitment to student learning

and development?

Posing such questions begins to develop criteria for prioritizing cur-

rent outcomes as well as the great ideas for improvements that result from

engaging in outcome-based assessment (see step 7).

Step Six: Align Division Resources with Institutional

Priorities. This step may appear a bit similar to previous steps,

but

nevertheless it is important to consider. The prioritization of the division

resources toward strategic initiatives inﬂ uences the availability of resources

to improve more reﬁ ned levels of action plans. And the decisions to reﬁ ne

the actions plans are informed by results of outcomes-based assessment

(see step 7). If your institution is bound by a governance structure that

gives you very little room to allocate resources in accordance with your

strategic plan, then this step will be very quick for the institution to

complete, because you are constrained by an inability to prioritize the

resources on your own. If the institutional governance allows more

ﬂ exibility in the allocation of resources, then the idea is to make available

certain resources for the improvement and reﬁ nement of strategic priorities

that can be allocated based on the results of outcomes-based assessment or

on the proposals of innovative action plans to improve strategic indicators

and initiatives.

Step Seven: Implement Outcomes-Based Assessment Program

Review. Implementing outcomes-based assessment plans for the action

plans to achieve the strategic plan will help in gathering meaningful data

about how well you are achieving your strategic plan. If assessment is done

well, the results will yield speciﬁ c information on what needs to be improved

in order to reﬁ ne the strategic indicators articulated in step 4 (Banta and

others, 2009; Bresciani, 2006; Bresciani and others, 2009;

Jenefsky and

others, 2009; Maki, 2004; Schuh and Associates, 2009; Suskie, 2009).

The following sections set out typical components of an assessment

plan and report.

Program Name. The program name helps indicate the scope of the

assessment project. Are you planning on assessing a series of workshops

within the leadership development center, or on evaluating the entire lead-

ership development center? Often it is difﬁ cult to determine the scope of

an assessment plan (Schuh and Associates, 2009). When in doubt, organize

the plan around programs that have autonomous outcomes (Bresciani and

others, 2004; Bresciani and others, 2009).

Program Mission or Purpose. List the program mission or purpose

statement. It may also be helpful to provide a one- or two-sentence

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explanation of how this program mission or purpose aligns with the depart-

ment, college, division, or university’s mission within which it is organized.

Setting this out will help explain how the program aligns with institutional

values and priorities.

Program Goals. Goals are broad, general statements of what the pro-

gram wants students to be able to do and to know or what the program will

do to ensure what students will be able to do and to know. Goals are not

directly measurable. Rather, they are evaluated directly or indirectly by

measuring speciﬁ c outcomes derived from the goals (Bresciani and others,

2004; Bresciani and others, 2009).

The further alignment of each goal to

department, college or division, or university goals or strategic initiatives

generated from the strategic plan assists with the communication of priori-

ties and allows programs to show how they are operating within stated

priorities. In addition, the alignment of each goal with professional accredi-

tation standards, if applicable, allows you to determine how this program

intends to meet higher-level organization goals and strategic planning

initiatives.

Outcomes. Outcomes are more detailed and speciﬁ c statements derived

from the goals. They speciﬁ cally are about what you want the end result of

your efforts to be. In other words, what do you expect the student to know

and do as a result of, for example, a one-hour workshop, one-hour indi-

vidual meeting, Web site instructions, or series of workshops? Outcomes

do not describe what you are going to do to the student, but rather how

you want the student to demonstrate what he or she knows or can do

(Bresciani and others, 2004; Bresciani and others, 2009).

In addition, you want to be able to align each outcome with a program

goal. This alignment allows you to link your outcomes to department, col-

lege or division, or university goals and strategic initiatives, as well as pro-

fessional accreditation standards. Such alignment allows you to determine

how this program intends to meet higher-level organization goals and stra-

tegic planning initiatives.

Planning for Delivery of Outcomes. This is where action planning

comes into the process. Here is where you describe or simply draw a dia-

gram that explains how you plan for the student to learn what you expect

the student to learn in order for the outcome to be met. Do you plan for the

students to learn what you expect them to in a workshop, one-on-one con-

sultation, or a Web site? Simply indicate all the ways in which you provide

students the opportunity to achieve the learning outcome. Identifying

where outcomes are being taught or delivered also provides reviewers with

opportunities to identify where that outcome may be evaluated.

Evaluation Methods and Tools. Often the evaluation method or tool

section of the assessment plan can be intimidating to practitioners. This

section is not intended to include detailed research methodology. It is

intended to simply describe the tools and methods (for example, observa-

tion with a criteria checklist, survey with speciﬁ c questions identiﬁ ed,

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essay with a rubric, role-playing with a criteria checklist) you will use to

evaluate the outcomes of participants in speciﬁ c programs. In this section,

you identify the sample or population you will be evaluating, identify an

evaluation method or tool for each outcome, and include the criteria that

will be used with the tool to determine whether the outcome has been

met—for example:

• If the tool to measure an outcome is a survey, which questions in the

survey are measuring the outcome?

• If the tool is a test, which questions measure the outcome?

• If the tool is an observation, what are the criteria that you apply to

the observation in order to identify whether the outcome has been

met?

Add limitations of the evaluation method or tool if necessary. Limita-

tions are reminders to you and the reviewer that while the evaluation pro-

cess may not have gone extremely well, you recognize the limitations and

have documented them to be considered in decision making or for

improvements to be made the next time. In addition, select other institu-

tional, system or national data (for example, enrollment numbers, faculty-

to-student ratios, retention rates, graduation rates, utilization statistics,

satisfaction ratings, National Survey of Student Engagement scores) that

will be used to help you interpret how and whether the outcome has been

met.

Implementation of Assessment Process. This is the planning section for

the implementation of the assessment process. Not everything has to be

evaluated every year. You can simply evaluate two or three outcomes each

year, which will create a multiyear assessment plan, of which the ﬁ nal year

of the assessment plan feeds into the comprehensive program review pro-

cess. Identify who is responsible for doing each step in the evaluation pro-

cess. Outline the time line for implementation, including the years in

which each outcome will be evaluated (so as not to indicate that everything

must be evaluated every year). Also include which year you will be review-

ing all prior outcomes data results (for example, comprehensive program

review year) for a holistic program review discussion.

In addition, identify other programs that are assisting with the evalua-

tion and when they are assisting. Include time lines for external reviewers

(including professional accreditation reviews, if applicable) and for com-

munication across departments or colleges. Identify who will be participat-

ing in interpreting the data and making recommendations, along with a

time line for implementing the decisions and recommendations. Finally, be

sure to outline how lines of communication will ﬂ ow. Who will see the

results, when will they see the results, and who will be involved in deter-

mining whether the results are acceptable?

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Results. Summarize the results for each outcome as well as the process

to verify, validate, or authenticate the results. This may include how results

were discussed with students, alumni, other program faculty and adminis-

trators, or external reviewers. Link the results generated from the out-

comes-based assessment results to any other program, college, or institu-

tional performance indicators.

Reﬂ ection, Interpretation, Decisions, and Recommendations. This section

summarizes the decisions and recommendations made for each outcome

and illustrates how you determined if the results were satisfactory. It

therefore requires describing the process used to inform how the level of

acceptable performance was determined and why it was determined as

such.

Illustrate how decisions and recommendations may be contributing to

the improvement of higher-level goals and strategic initiatives. Identify the

groups that participate in the reﬂ ection, interpretation, and discussion of

the evidence that led to the recommendations and decisions. It may then be

helpful to summarize the suggestions for improving the assessment pro-

cess, tools, criteria, and outcomes. Finally, be sure to identify when each

outcome will be evaluated again (if the outcome is to be retained and who

is responsible).

Documentation of Higher-Level Feedback. This section is designed to

document how results are used and how the results are disseminated

throughout the institution. The intent is to document conversations and

collaborations that are being implemented in order to systematically and

institutionally improve student learning and development. Include the

routing of the recommendations or decisions (for example, who needs to

see the recommendations or be involved in the decision making) if

resources, policy changes, or other information was required outside the

scope of the program. For example, if you are the program coordinator and

the decisions you and your students recommend require the approval of the

department director, then you need to indicate that the approval of the

decision must ﬂ ow through the departmental director.

Appendixes. Include any appendixes that may help illustrate the man-

ner in which you evaluate your program. For example, you may want to

include the curriculum alignment or outcome and delivery map or the

tools and criteria to evaluate each outcome. You may also choose to include

any external review of the plan, results, or decisions and what was con-

cluded from that external review. Include any budget plans and resource

reallocation or allocation documents as well

(Bresciani, 2010).

Step Eight: Allocate and Reallocate Resources to Help Realize the

Goals. Jenefsky and others (2009) discuss in detail how outcomes-based

program review provides an effective way for institutional leadership to use

systematically collected data to inform speciﬁ c decisions for improving

strategic plan initiatives. Thus, the ﬁ ndings and recommendations from

step 7 can be used as evidence to inform decision-making processes at

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various levels in the institution (for example, from the program level

through the university level).

In order to frame this discussion, remember that some suggestions to

improve strategic initiatives can occur with very little resource reallocation

(for example, resequencing process steps, reﬁ nements in the criteria for

student evaluation, or reorganization of workshop material). Other ﬁ nd-

ings may point to a need for a larger reallocation of resources, ranging from

staff development for assessment to hiring more staff or faculty members to

ﬁ ll unmet needs.

Step Nine: Make It All Systematic. The ﬁ nal step in this process is

to make the entire data-driven planning process systematic. This requires

institutional leadership to schedule periodic holistic reviews of their

processes in order to ensure that they are working together to inform data-

driven planning. There are several things to consider when creating a

systematic, sustainable, and data-driven planning process. The ﬁ rst is to

build collaborations across departments, colleges and divisions, and

hierarchical structures so that information can ﬂ ow in an environment of

trust. Second, review position descriptions and personnel review processes

to ensure that faculty and staff are constantly reminded of the importance

of engaging in data-driven planning, given professional development

opportunities to learn how to do this well, and rewarded for using data to

inform decisions. Third, maintain the integrity of the data by being

forthright with how data will be used for planning purposes, resource

reallocations, and professional development opportunities. Fourth,

consistently use data and provide systematic processes for communicating

how the data are used for informing decisions and planning. This will

motivate faculty and staff engagement in the process. Finally, identify

strategies to keep morale high when someone’s program is not selected as

an institutional priority.

Conclusion

Ensuring these steps are followed will more than likely lead your institu-

tion to establishing an effective data-driven planning process. The gather-

ing and analysis of data also has the potential to strengthen the

implementation of a well-documented plan. The ongoing cycle of evalua-

tion and assessment will ensure the plan’s effectiveness.

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MARILEE J. BRESCIANI is a professor of postsecondary education and codirector

of the Center for Educational Leadership, Innovation, and Policy at San Diego

State University.

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