AEFIS Program Proficiency Scale - Comprehensive Guide

Updated: October 2021

Description: The Proficiency Scale in AEFIS determines the level of achievement a student or group of students have attained on a particular outcome in reporting.  This Proficiency scale can be unique by Program, or universal at the Institution, College, or Department level of the Institution Hierarchy in AEFIS.  This allows for custom reporting on student achievement for specialty accreditation, or a universal scale of achievement that allows the institution to collect aggregate data results across the Institution, College, or Department.  Partners may design this scale with anywhere from 2-6 levels of achievement, and choose custom colors and names for each level.  The Proficiency Scale must be set at a level of the hierarchy prior to manually adding Program Learning Outcomes, or having your Programs/Program Learning Outcomes imported during Onboarding.  The Proficiency Scale gets locked into place and hard coded to Program Learning Outcomes, so if the outcomes are added or imported, and then Proficiency Scale is changed, the outcomes will have to be deleted and manually re-added to apply the new scale.  This guide will explain how the Proficiency Scale is used and displayed in AEFIS so your Institution can make an informed decision on how to set the scale at the Institution, College, or Department level and whether to allow editing of that scale by Programs.

Applicable to:  Institution Admin, College Admin, Department Admin, Program Coordinator

Part One: What is the Proficiency Scale

Part Two: How is the Proficiency Scale created?

Part Three: Where is the Proficiency Scale displayed in reporting in AEFIS?

Part Four: How do I create the relationship between the Proficiency Scale and an Assignment?

Part One:  What is the Proficiency Scale?

• The Proficiency Scale is the set of benchmark levels that your programs will use to group the student learning outcome achievement in the direct assessment process. They can be uniform across all Programs at an institution, or they can vary based on College, Department or on an individual Program level.
• This is the basis of ALL direct assessment of student learning outcomes, and is required for the basic set up of your AEFIS instance.
• AEFIS does not require that your institution uses a specific scale, which is why it may be modified and customized for every institution, and is unique to that institution.
• While the levels are static once created, there are many tools in the direct assessment process in AEFIS that allows admins and Faculty to align those benchmarks with their expectations of student achievement, as micro as the relationship created between assignment rubric points in one assignment to a specific level of the Proficiency Scale. 

Part Two:  How is the Proficiency Scale created?

The Proficiency Scale is typically created through your Institution's Program Settings.  In many cases, the Institution will lock this scale into place and will require all Programs to use the standard scale.  In other cases, when you create a new program you will have the option to update/change the Proficiency Scale in that individual Program's settings.  If your Program's Proficiency Scale differs from other Programs, and you would like to collect assessment data across multiple programs using a Department, College, Institution or Accreditor Outcome Set, if you will not be able to aggregate your Program's results with the other Programs.  So this is why in many cases, related Programs will use the same proficiency scale to collect common Outcome Set data across multiple Programs.

This is what the Proficiency Scale set up screen looks like in the Institution, College, Department and Program manager Settings:

• Admins may create one standard scale with up to 6 levels, and change the names and colors provided in the defaults.  So the names, number of levels, and colors seen above can be modified and customized by your admins.
• In other settings, there will be an option to require that all Programs use this scale, or allow the Colleges, Departments and Programs to set their own scale.  This scale will be seen in ALL reporting on direct assessment results, so it is the most important Program setting. 
• This must be set before you start creating Programs and adding Program Learning Outcomes, as once this scale is applied to an outcome it can not be changed without deleting the outcome, or in some cases depending on the choices made in the next settings, updating these settings and recreating the program from scratch.

Part Two:  Where is the Proficiency Scale displayed in AEFIS?

All Assignment Linking in AEFIS will display the option to set the relationship between the Proficiency Scale and assignment(s) and rubric criteria (when applicable).  You will see this scale in Course Sections and the Assignment Linking Manager. It is seen in this format when that relationship is being created:

All reports on Program Outcome Assessment display information from the Proficiency Scale.  It is the basis of all assessment reporting in AEFIS. Below find a few examples where the Proficiency Scale is seen in Reporting:

• Course Section Assessment Results
  
• Direct Assessment Graphs Report
  In this case, just the colors of the Proficiency Scale are shown on the bar graph results for a quick view of student learning outcome achievement.
  
  Drilling down into each outcome's bar graph can give a more detailed view of the distribution across the Proficiency scale by Course and whether that course met the Proficiency Scale level goals for that Outcome.
  

Program Curriculum Mapping also displays the Proficiency Scale, as you can set a specific goal for student learning outcome achievement level on the Proficiency Scale at the individual Course/CLO to Program Outcome relationship:

For more information about the Proficiency Scale, see the following Help Resource Guides:

• Linking Rubric Criteria to Outcomes - How the Proficiency Scale Settings Translate Scores into Outcomes Achievement
• Setting the Proficiency Scale when Assignment Linking - Assignment Linking Manager and new Course Section Assignment Linking Page