Middle States Association  Standards
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Standard 11  

Educational Offerings 
The institutions educational offerings display academic content, rigor, and coherence that are appropriate to its higher education mission. The institution identifies student learning goals and objectives, including knowledge and skills, for its educational offerings.     

 

Fundamental Elements of Educational Offerings

Relative to this standard, an accredited institution is characterized by:

bullet educational offerings congruent with its mission, which include appropriate areas of academic study of sufficient content, breadth and length, and conducted at levels of rigor appropriate to the programs or degrees offered; (11FE1 Data)
bullet formal undergraduate, graduate, and/or professional programs-leading to a degree or other recognized higher education credential-designed to foster a coherent student learning experience and to promote synthesis of learning; (11FE2 Data)
bullet program goals that are stated in terms of student learning outcomes; (11FE3 Data)
bullet

program goals that are stated in terms of student learning outcomes; periodic evaluation of the effectiveness of any curricular, co-curricular, and extra-curricular experiences it provides its students and utilization of evaluation results as a basis for improving its student development program and for enabling students to understand their own educational progress; (11FE4 Data)

bullet

learning resources, facilities, instructional equipment, library services, and professional library staff adequate to support the institution s educational programs; (11FE5 Data)

bullet collaboration between professional library staff and faculty in teaching and fostering information literacy skills relevant to the curriculum; (11FE6 Data)
bullet programs that promote student use of information and learning resources; (11FE7 Data)
bullet provision of comparable quality of teaching/ instruction, academic rigor, and educational effectiveness of its courses and programs regardless of the location or delivery mode; (11FE8 Data)
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    published and implemented policies and procedures regarding transfer credit. The acceptance or denial of transfer credit will not be determined exclusively on the basis of the accreditation of the sending institution or the mode of delivery but, rather, will consider course equivalencies, including expected learning outcomes, with those of the receiving institutions curricula and standards. Such criteria will be fair, consistently applied, and publicly communicated; (11FE9 Data)

bullet policies and procedures to assure that the educational expectations, rigor, and student learning within any accelerated programs are comparable to those that characterize more traditional program formats; (11FE10 Data)
bullet consistent with the institutions educational programs and student cohorts, practices and policies that reflect the needs of adult learners; (11FE12 Data)
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course syllabi that incorporate expected learning outcomes; (11FE13 Data)
 Optional Analysis and Evidence:

   National Survey of Student Engagement: Institutional Environment (1. r; 3; 4; 5; 9.d; 10. f))
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