The Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) is required by SACS Core Requirement 2.12 that states:
The institution must develop an acceptable QEP that:
“The Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) is the component of the accreditation process that reflects and affirms the commitment of the Commission on Colleges to the enhancement of the quality of higher education and to the proposition that student learning is at the heart of the mission of all institutions of higher learning.”
For Fayetteville State University, “developing a QEP as a part of the reaffirmation process is an opportunity to enhance overall institutional quality and effectiveness by focusing on an issue or issues the institution considers important to improving student learning."
The Fayetteville State University Quality Enhancement Plan, Making Evidence-Based Decisions (MEBD), focuses on assessment of student learning and faculty-staff development to improve students’ critical thinking and analytical reasoning skills. FSU students will demonstrate continued growth in making evidence-based decisions from lower- through upper-division studies.
The vision for the Fayetteville State University (FSU) Quality Enhancement Plan, Making Evidence-Based Decisions (MEBD), is to provide an enhanced learning environment in which upper-division FSU students receive more support in facilitating critical literacy skills (reading, writing, and reflecting), which are the basic elements, or building blocks of learning, that help students develop new or enhanced mental structures or thinking capabilities. Our vision is that instruction for developing such skills will be based on a wide variety of strategies and techniques that have proven successful in facilitating students’ abilities to build their application of critical literacy skills in real-world problem solving work.
The scope of the QEP ranges from establishing the topic to evaluating the progress and outcomes as follows:
The goals of the MEBD are adopted from the work of the AAC&U VALUE Project:
• Students will demonstrate continued growth in making evidence-based decisions from lower-division through upper-division studies as measured by the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA).
• Students will demonstrate continued growth individually in making evidence-based decisions in the major as measured by formative evaluations such as rubrics.
• Students’ critical and analytical thinking scores will be equal to that of selected peers as measured by ratings on National Study of Student Engagement (NSSE) item (11e).
The knowledge, skills, and abilities will be measured formatively using a common rubric at least two times in various experiences or courses during MEBD. In addition, the extent to which these skills have been enhanced will be ascertained through administration of the CLA at two transition points (the Rising Junior Examination and the Senior Exit Exam) during the matriculation period.
Faculty and/or staff will be the facilitators of the learning environment enhancement at FSU in support of the QEP. They may be major professors or extracurricular activities heads. Over a 2-year period, the facilitators will participate in professional development and implement strategies learned in projects that address Reading Across the Curriculum, Writing Across the Curriculum, Information Literacy, Creating Significant Learning Experiences, and Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) at the university. Each unit will design its own professional development package by combining one or more pathways in which to participate.
Students were involved in planning the MEBD through the Bright Idea Campaign, through completion of surveys, and by the score they earned on university assessments. Using data from these sources and responses by faculty, staff and administration on the Bright Idea Campaign, the topic of critical thinking was identified.
Faculty and staff gave feedback to the QEP Committee that helped to narrow the topic from critical thinking to making evidence-based decisions, a specific kind of action-oriented thinking.
Students served on focus groups to help design handbills and fliers to announce MEBD to the campus. And students participated in the Know Your QEP contest designed to encourage students to describe MEBD to faculty and staff.
Students will become involved in Making Evidence-Based Decisions when their department faculty or co-curricular activity leader submits a request to participate. Students in a participating unit will complete the Rising Junior Examination, and complete performance tasks embedded in junior and senior level coursework or co-curricular activity that require the use of evidence and critical thinking to create, support or refute an argument or position. Students will engage in using rubrics to self-check their critical thinking during the junior and senior years. In the last semester of the senior year, participating students will complete a Senior Exit Exam. Students will participate in periodic campus-wide MEBD events.
There are three (3) ways that faculty, staff and administrators can be involved in the QEP:
FSU Office of SACS Liaison