UMKC must provide an assurance argument based on supporting evidence that demonstrate the university meets HLC’s Criteria for Accreditation. More information on providing evidence is available on the HLC website.
Project Description: UMKC must demonstrate that it is maintaining educational standards to the Higher Learning Commission in the form of an Assurance Argument with linked evidence files. There will likely be more evidence files identified than will ultimately be used, however, during the site visit it is not uncommon for the peer review team to want to see additional evidence. This means having a central repository that is secure and cloud-based, that can also be readily backed-up, and that has metadata functionality is needed. To improve workflow, this application functions as a repository for the uploading and retrieval of evidence files. Moving from a manual process to an automated system saves time, improves quality, and creates visibility.
HLC Steering Committee members may use the HLC Evidence Directory to upload, archive, and export evidence files.
The HLC Evidence Directory is designed to manage and archive a large number of evidence files pertaining to the Assurance Argument. The Executive Committee determined making available a cross-criterion directory such as this would support the assurance argument project in a number of ways:
- Each Criterion Subcommittee co-chair may upload documents to the system and at the same time change the name of the document to a consistent file-naming protocol.
- Each Criterion Subcommittee co-chair may edit documents, replace document, and update contextual notes about the documents.
- Each Criterion Subcommittee co-chair may view all of the documents submitted by their colleagues – with filter, sort, and search features.
- Each Criterion Subcommittee co-chair may download documents either individually or by selecting numerous files and downloading by bulk.
- The HLC Evidence Directory is available online, and is secured by SSO.
- At completion of the HLC Reaffirmation process, all of the files, used and unused, may be archived.
HLC Steering Committee (co-chairs of each criterion sub-committee and the Executive Committee) may use the HLC Evidence Directory to upload, archive, and export evidence files. To ask that an additional committee member or designee be added as a user of the HLC Evidence Directory, please contact Alexis Petri with your request.
Acknowledgement and History: The HLC Executive Committee participated in last fall’s Hackathon and several student groups selected the project case. One group, and one student, completed a prototype within the hackathon weekend. Noah Rhee, the student, then worked with Buddy Pennington, Vishal Kurup, and Ashok Yaganti to build an application that would meet the security and usability standards to be deployed on a UMKC production server. A resounding thank you to the team that worked diligently and with great expertise to make the HLC Evidence Directory available and usable.
