The IDEA Center

IDEA services are built on an extensive, nation-wide research program and provide critical insight to guide personal and programmatic reflection. Each service offers targeted feedback for improving personal performance – while positively impacting the institution’s processes and outcomes.

These three goals—insight, improvement, impact—lie at the heart of our model, which involves:

• Utilizing our longitudinal databases to ensure a rich and informed assessment;
• Continually testing and documenting the reliability and validity of our instruments;
• Guiding improvement efforts through specific, research-based recommendations unique to each individual’s objectives and current behavior;
• Soliciting critical feedback from faculty, staff or students;
• Accounting for influences on learning and performance over which the instructor or administrator has little or no control;
• Assessing individual impact, as well as collective progress through the use of  group summary reports;

• Using IDEA rating and feedback systems on an ongoing basis, as part of a larger strategy of individual, program or institutional improvement.