From Compliance to

Continuous Improvement

Practical Strategies for Making Assessment Matter

Assessment Institute Pre-Conference Workshop | October 18, 2026 | 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Megan Good • James Madison University

Joe Levy • Excelsior University

Will Miller • Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Workshop Agenda

All

Participant Learning Outcomes

All

By the end of this workshop, you will be able to:

Describe

key changes and uncertainties in the federal and accreditation landscape and consider their implications for assessment and improvement work.

Distinguish

among assessment practices driven primarily by external requirements, institutional expectations, and a genuine desire to understand and improve student learning.

Articulate

what you believe meaningful assessment and improvement work should accomplish for students and institutions, independent of specific accreditation requirements.

Identify

opportunities within your own role and context to preserve or advance meaningful assessment and improvement work amid changing external expectations.

✏ Who's in the Room?

All | 9:00–9:15

At your table, introduce yourself:

👤 Your name and institution/role

💬 "What brought you to this workshop?"

Purpose of this workshop:

Navigating a changing environment while keeping sight of what assessment is ultimately for.

The Ground Is Moving

Federal & Accreditation Landscape

Will | 9:15–9:50

The Ground Is Moving: Federal & Accreditation Landscape

Will | 9:15–9:35

THE BIGGER SHIFT: Higher education is being asked to demonstrate quality, value, and student success across multiple accountability systems, while the rules and measures continue to change.

What We KNOW

Scrutiny is growing around cost, completion, debt, employment, and public trust.

Accreditation is one part of a larger accountability environment that includes federal policy, states, licensure, consumers, and institutional leadership.

Institutions need credible evidence that results inform decisions and lead to improvement.

What Is CHANGING

The emphasis is shifting from inputs and processes toward outcomes, value, transparency, and workforce relevance.

Federal policy is moving toward greater influence over what accreditation and accountability systems must examine.

Institutions are being asked to innovate faster while demonstrating that new approaches work.

What Remains UNCERTAIN

Which measures will count, and who will set them?

How will expectations account for mission, discipline, modality, and student context?

How will institutions protect academic judgment and autonomy amid expanding accountability?

THE QUESTION: The question is not whether accountability will disappear. The question is whether we can preserve assessment that helps institutions understand and improve student learning as accountability expectations change.

✏ So What Does This Mean for Us?

Will | 9:35–9:50

Think (2 min) → Pair (3 min) → Table (3 min) → Whole Group (5 min)

1

Which external force (e.g., state, accreditation, federal) could most affect your assessment work?

2

Could any anticipated changes make assessment more useful, focused, or less burdensome?

3

What might become harder to explain, measure, or act on?

4

What do you need to understand before your institution can respond?

Why Assessment?

Compliance Is Real—but Is That the Point?

All | 9:50–10:10

✏ Why Do YOU Do Assessment?

All | 9:50–10:10

Individual reflection → Table discussion

Why do YOU do assessment?

Why does your institution do it?

Explore the different reasons assessment gets done at your table.

Accountability /

Compliance

Required by accreditors, regulators, or institutional policy

Genuine Desire

to Improve

Driven by curiosity about student learning and a desire to do better

Tension &

Overlap

Where do accountability requirements and genuine improvement intersect or conflict?

BREAK

10:10 – 10:25

Please return at 10:25

Assessment Purpose → Behaviors

The Accountability ↔ Improvement Continuum

Joe | 10:25–10:55

The Accountability ↔ Improvement Continuum

Joe | 10:25–10:30

How the purpose we assign to assessment shows up in what we actually spend our time and energy doing.

ACCOUNTABILITY

& COMPLIANCE

↔

CONTINUOUS

IMPROVEMENT

Meeting minimum requirements

Documentation-focused

Driven by external deadlines

Assessment as obligation

Asking meaningful questions

Evidence-informed decisions

Driven by desire to improve

Assessment as inquiry

Important caveat:

Accountability ≠ bad

Improvement ≠ good

​

We examine what happens when compliance becomes the dominant purpose.

What Does This Look Like in Practice?

Joe | 10:30–10:42

Brief examples from across institutional contexts

Primarily Compliance-Oriented

Determining effort/actions by what accreditors require.

​

Issues magically disappear if accreditation report comes back clean.

Oriented Toward Improvement

Being accountable to own values/student interest vs external comparisons.

​

Intentionally change language/mindset to be driven by good practice, not compliance.

​

Where the Two Productively Intersect

Accreditation is an awesome opportunity for reflection on state of affairs.

​

Aim for good practice, serving students, promoting improvement; meets external needs

✏ Where Does It Fall?

Joe | 10:42–10:55

Place each practice on the Accountability ↔ Improvement continuum. Discuss what additional context matters.

← Compliance

Improvement →

Practice 1 — Requiring report-related meetings and milestones throughout the year

Practice 2 — Hosting celebrations of assessment work

Practice 3 — Tagging evidence documents with accreditation standards

Practice 4 — Always setting annual actions for data-informed change, regardless of target results

Imagine Accreditation Disappears.

What would you keep? Stop? Change or start? Why?

Megan | 10:55–11:15

✏ KEEP / STOP / CHANGE-START

Megan | 10:55–11:15

Frame (3 min) → Individual reflection (5 min) → Table discussion (10 min)

If accreditation requirements disappeared tomorrow, but your institution still deeply cared about student learning and educational quality...

✅ KEEP

What assessment work would you continue doing—and why?

[Space for notes]

🛑 STOP

What would you stop doing—because it only exists to satisfy an external requirement?

[Space for notes]

🔄 CHANGE / START

What would you change—or what new work would you begin?

[Space for notes]

What Makes Assessment Worth Doing?

Megan | 11:15–11:30

Whole-group synthesis. What patterns do we see? What tells us assessment is genuinely worthwhile?

Focus especially on KEEP and START — what characteristics make this work worth doing?

Capture themes from the room:

Theme 1

Theme 2

Theme 3

Theme 4

Theme 5

Theme 6

✏ Where Do I Have Agency?

Joe | 11:30–11:40

Individual reflection + action planning

Given what you believe is worth doing and the realities of your context...

CONTROL

What assessment work can you directly do or continue?

Identify one realistic action →

INFLUENCE

What can you shape, even without full authority?

Identify one realistic action →

ADVOCATE FOR

What meaningful work deserves a champion—even if change is slow?

Identify one realistic action →

Return to Why

All | 11:40–11:45

We began with a question. We return to it now.

Why do I do assessment?

Why does my institution do it?

What, if anything, would you add, change, or think about differently now?

Questions + Conversation

11:45 – 12:00

Navigating changing expectations while preserving meaningful assessment and improvement work.

Megan Good

James Madison University

good2mr@jmu.edu

Joe Levy

Excelsior University

jlevy@excelsior.edu

Will Miller

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

will.miller@erau.edu