• Accreditation Leadership Academy (ALA)

    Outline of Curriculum

LEARNING OUTCOMES

  1. Participants will define and be able to explain the ALA Framework of Evidence, Equity, and Effectiveness (EEE).
  2. Participants will construct a collaborative understanding of the potential for application of the ALA Framework across higher education practice.
  3. Participants will apply the ALA Framework to a specific problem facing the participant’s institution.
  4. Participants will develop and integrate leadership and collaborative skills into personal professional practice.
  5. Participants will communicate with and contribute to WSCUC’s Educational Programs community, including Assessment Leadership and Community of Practice (CoP) alumni.

ONLINE PLATFORM

The ALA will employ a social learning platform or Learning Management System to create a community of inquiry for collaboration in purposeful discourse and serve as the hub of activity between in-person meetings. It will:

  • Support collaboration (ability to share documents, folders, videos, artifacts)
  • House a forum/discussion tab
  • Manage training materials
  • Support webinar/zoom recordings
  • Allow for teamwork and file sharing
  • Allow for feedback from teachers/faculty/mentors on projects
  • Eventually link out to a CoP/Website

Personnel

ALA staff consists of WSCUC staff, ALA Scholars, and ALA Mentor Faculty. Senior Scholars are experienced and nationally recognized higher education professionals who will give a keynote presentation and help guide the cohort’s creation of the ALA Framework. Mentor Faculty (five Mentor Faculty will each mentor five participants) are drawn from the community of WSUCUC Fellows and ALA and CoP alumni and will mentor individual ALI participants and facilitate the work of smaller groups, determined by project subjects, in developing the cohort’s ALA Framework interpretation.

Process and Assignments

Assignment 1: Co-creation of the Equity, Evidence, and Effectiveness (EEE) Framework

Participants will work with Senior Scholars, Faculty Mentors, and their cohort peers to create inquiry-based learning frameworks. They will contribute to co-constructed definitions of Equity, Evidence, and Effectiveness through participation and contributions in face to face and hybrid workshops, webinars, presentations, discussions, wikis, and an online community of practice.

Deliverables

Participation and contribution to the EEE Frameworks will result in:

  • An online resource containing educational materials and representations of the cohort’s definition and analysis of the current ALI framework.
  • A set of educational materials and references supporting the ALA Framework suitable for presentation by ALA participants.

Assignment 2: The ALA Project

Participants will complete a comprehensive inquiry into a specific problem at their institution via project-based learning principles and contextualize an application of the ALA Framework to address the problem. They will:

  • Identify and situate the problem within the ALA EEE Framework
  • Suggest and, to the extent possible, test their application through an action research lens

Deliverable

  • A final artifact (such as an action plan, website, podcast series, or white paper), suitable for implementation at the participant’s institution and for use as educational and presentation content. The final artifact will be shared and presented to the cohort at the final meeting of the program.

In-Person Meeting Schedule

Day 1

Orientation and explanation of the ALA, the EEE Framework, and the ALA curriculum and its process

Day 2

Morning
“E” Presentation
“E” Conversation and Contextualization

Afternoon
“E” Presentation
“E” Conversation and Contextualization

Evening
Dinner and Conversation: Higher Education Leadership (featuring senior leaders from the WSCUC Commission and the higher education community)

Day 3

Morning
“E” Presentation
“E” Conversation and Contextualization

Afternoon
Leadership theory and practice; project workshop, next steps for ALA participation