Assessment

Types of Assessments

Assessments are one of the ways we collect information about a student through Beacon. Our assessments target non-cognitive attributes which are those academically and occupationally relevant skills and traits that are not specifically intellectual or analytical in nature. They include a range of personality and motivational habits and attitudes that facilitate functioning well in school. Non-cognitive traits, skills, and characteristics include perseverance, motivation, self-control and other aspects of conscientiousness.

Student Strengths Inventory (SSI)

The SSI is a 48 question assessment which measures 6 non-cognitive factors:

• Academic Engagement
• Academic Self-Efficacy
• Campus Engagement
• Social Comfort
• Resiliency
• Educational Comfort

Students answer each item on a 6-point scale from "Strongly Agree" to "Strongly Disagree". The assessment is administered before or very shortly after the student arrives on campus. Administrators have an option to show the results of the examination to the student right away, but most opt to have the student schedule a meeting with their advisor to go over the results.

Continuing Student Assessment (CSA)

The CSA is recurring compliment to the SSI for students enrolled at the institution more than one year. The 53 question assessment measures 7 non-cognitive factors:

• Academic Engagement
• Campus Engagement
• Career Maturity
• Identity
• Life Complexity
• Resiliency
• Self-Regulatory Learning

Once the student takes a CSA, their results will be visible under the Assessments tab on their student report and their older assessment results will be available for reference through a link at the bottom of that section.

Custom Questions

Custom Questions can be appended to the end of either assessment. The answers to these questions are displayed at the end of the student’s assessment report and can be used for creating extra student recommendations and triggering data insights.

Delivering an Assessment

Creating an Administration

In Beacon, an Administration is the process of sending an assessment to students. An assessment (SSI or CSA, not both) is assigned to each administration. Administrations allow administrators to group similar cohorts together and assign certain settings to an assessment over a period of time. A example of an Administration group would be “Incoming Students (Fall 2005)”, with Mailings set up for each orientation session.

Taking an Assessment

Students receive an email with a little bit of background about the assessment they will be taking and a link to take the assessment. Assessments are responsive and available on desktop and mobile.

After taking the assessment, the student will be directed to a page with their results or a message describing how receive their results from an advisor. Students can schedule meetings with their advisors through Beacon if that feature is configured.

Results

Student Report

The results for any assessment a student takes are available on their Student Report under the “Assessments” tab. Here they will see their results broken down by factor. Each factor has an explanation of what the factor means, a score, and a set of recommendations based on the student's score.

Non-Cognitive Report

The Non-Cognitive Report shows the SSI results for the entire population of students at an institution who have completed an active administration of the SSI. This report shows executives and administrators a population-wide view of the assessment results.

The report can be filtered by different demographic, academic, and assessment data points to show a comparison between subsets and the population at large. Data can also be downloaded for the administrator to create their own reports and comparisons.