The Planning Intelligence feature in the Anthology Planning tool is designed to enable campuses to document, design, and visualize their assessment cycle. To learn about the concepts and applications of Planning Intelligence and Assessment Cycles on your campus, please follow this link.
The following resource will provide users a guide on how to set up the Assessment Cycle feature in Planning.
Creating an Assessment Cycle
As Planning Site Administrator, navigate to settings and select Assessment Cycles to manage assessment cycles.
Any active assessment cycle will be listed under the Active tab, any assessment cycle created but not yet deployed will appear under the Scheduled tab, and any previously completed cycles will appear under the Expired tab. This is determined by today's date aligned with the window of time selected for each cycle.
To create a new assessment cycle, select +Assessment Cycle in the top right.
Users will be presented with a screen where they can create the new assessment cycle.
- Assessment Cycle Name: This is where a user can enter the name of their assessment cycle. Best Practice: This will be how you discern your cycles from one another on the dashboard, so include key details such as units included, type of reporting involved, and/or applicable years. We suggest creating a single assessment cycle for all units who have the same reporting expectations and deadlines.
- Assessment Cycle Description: This is where a user can enter a description of their assessment cycle. The description can become useful to differentiate between multiple assessment cycles for users.
- Assessment Cycle Date Range: Select the Time Period(s) that the assessment cycle will run through.
- Assessment Cycle Org Units: The organizational units that have been selected to participate in this assessment cycle will be listed under the “Assessment Cycle Org Unit” header.
To find organizational units, users should use the search bar. Users may search for keywords or entire organizational unit’s titles. Search results will appear under the search bar. Select the desired organizational units to include them in the assessment cycle. Under each organizational unit, users will also have the option to Include child org units. Remember to click the "+ Org Units" button next to the search bar to make these inclusions final.
SEARCH ORG UNITS:
SELECT ORG UNITS:
SELECTED ORG UNITS:
Tip: If you need to make a change to the units included in a cycle, you may add new ones or expand the units and remove what has already been added at any time.
Assessment Cycle Phases
There are four phases to the assessment cycle: Plan, Do, Check, Act. Users should set the start and end dates for each phase of the cycle. Users can navigate to each phase of the cycle by selecting the appropriate phase tab. Each phase will contain a brief description to help guide users.
For each phase, users will have to select the Start Date and the End Date. Tip: You can choose to use the cycle start and end dates for each phase, but if you would like to break up reporting deadlines for each phase across the cycle, this could be a helpful way to guide your institution through the assessment cycle in phases with corresponding due dates.
On each phase of the assessment cycle, Site Admin must decide what information they will require users to input in order to complete the phase. Selected data fields will appear under the “Requirements for Phase Fulfillment” header. To add requirements, users need to select the +Template button to the right of the header.
This will present a dropdown menu consisting of the templates from existing plans.
Indicate how many of each template item every unit in this assessment cycle should have to be considered complete on the reporting criteria.
Users also have the ability to select specific fields from the template to add to the Requirements for Phase Fulfillment for the specific phase of the assessment cycle. To do this, users should select a template under the appropriate organizational unit. Doing so will then present users with a list of all the available fields in the template.
Select the appropriate fields, indicated by a check mark and greened box next to the field name. Any selected field will be required to be completed to mark phase fulfillment. Users may select as many fields from as many templates as necessary to complete the assessment cycle phase. Make sure to do this for each phase of the assessment cycle.
Tip: There is no Save button when creating an assessment cycle. Choices are automatically saved.
When users are done setting up thier assessment cycle, they may select the "Done" button or, if the cycle is active, users can go directly to the dashboard to view org unit status.
Deleting Assessment Cycles
Users can delete Assessment Cycles by selecting the Delete Icon on the lower left corner of the Assessment Cycle settings page. Deleting the assesment cycle does not alter any information in the org units, Planning items, or in the specific requiref fields. That data will still live in the areas where it was created.