VSA Voice

Have you ever wanted to take a comprehensive look at the results from the Student Achievement Measure (SAM) that incorporates both the breadth and depth of the data? SAM has featured exclusive tracking of several student cohorts since 2013, and VSA staff often get questions about the availability of the consolidated data. Now all of the SAM data are available in a single source. The VSA takes reporting on the SAM outcomes to a new level in two ways. First, VSA Analytics gives subscribers a platform to create their own custom reports on any of the SAM metrics collected since its inception. Any number of visualizations based on these student outcomes are possible. VSA Analytics has all of the SAM participating institutions available for peer group comparisons for each of the past four years of published data. For example, you could run a query on the two youngest U.S. states with a few clicks. To track the SAM outcomes for full-time transfer students at the University of Alaska compa...

Introducing the New VSA for 2018 Higher education increasingly relies on accurate data to make decisions regarding institutional planning, accountability, and marketing. At the same time, securing public trust requires institutional transparency.  Institutions are expected to provide consistent and standardized metrics to show progress on student success, institutional performance, and institutional efficiency.  Higher education institutions are asked to do more with less. How are institutions responding to the public in a climate where funding is declining?  How do institutions use data for planning? Ten years ago, institutions participated in the VSA to demonstrate their commitment to taking voluntary and meaningful steps toward transparency and accountability by offering profile data about their institutions and information about student learning outcomes.  Missing from this framework are benchmarking data and standardized metrics using nationally available...