Nuventive Improve

Nuventive Improve is a comprehensive assessment documentation and reporting package for higher education. 

Nuventive, the Nuventive logo, and the marks relating to other Nuventive products and services referenced herein are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Nuventive LLC. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Nuventive Improve Analytics reports are part of the service package on the Nuventive platform. The college tells Nuventive the home screens that the institution wants. Dashboards are interactive as they are built on top of Microsoft PowerBI. 

The menus are also customized by Nuventive according to the institution's needs. The screens being shown are demonstration only, and the specifics are up to each institution.

Custom forms are built out by Nuventive. The college defines the custom fields. On the left hand side is the report that is being worked on. On the right hand side any Word document, PDF, or URL can be displayed. The right hand side can also display any URL based item - including Google Datastudio dashboards. Items displayed on the right side can be captured - think screen area selection - and dragged and dropped into a form on the left so that the form captures what the writer was looking at when they entered the results that they were entering. 

The planning screen has "cards" for each outcome. 

Double clicking on the critical thinking  outcome opens up that outcome to provide details. Note that these screens are demonstration screens only. The institution works with Nuventive to generate the screens and information that the institution needs in the format the institution wants to see the data. Nuventive handles the data migration from TracDat to Nuventive Improve. Filters are available to filter by year and status. 

The next tab is Assessment Method. Again, filtering can be done. The items Exam and Capstone Project are both "cards" that can be double clicked on to open them and see further details. Drilling down on the Exam card opens up details. 

If one looks carefully at the above screen, the data being displayed is essentially the same data being captured in the college's current TracDat database. As the Nuventive team noted, Nuventive Improve is essentially primarily a front end on the data an institution has in TracDat. 

Mapping screens in Nuventive Improve, however, are more robust than those in TracDat. The dropdown menu shows that grids can be displayed that show mappings to goals, strategic plans, program outcomes, and the curriculum mapping. None of these items are fixed - this menu is configured for each institution by TracDat. The menu could include institutional outcomes or mapping to other institutional defined metrics. The grid items themselves are configured by Nuventive. Here the letters stand for High, Medium, and Low impact of the Thinking on a hypothetical college's general education goals. 

These mappings are designed per institution and the grids are also customizable. Nuventive then displayed courses listed on the left and a grid displaying I, R, and M for Introduced, Reinforced, Mastered. Again, everything is configured to the terminology the institution is choosing to use. 

On the Results and analysis screen one can edit, filter, look at particular reporting periods.  The user and last date of update is shown. Double clicking on a result opens up the details underneath that result. Results can be filtered by criterion or by reporting period. A Summary of results can also be displayed.

Nuventive noted that the College of Micronesia-FSM already has Canvas set up with a common ratings scale across all course learning outcomes, which makes dashboards possible. The way the data flow process works is that Nuventive gets a big data dump from Canvas and through  partnering with Microsoft, puts the data up in the Microsoft Azure cloud from which Nuventive can then write data reports, configure dashboards, that the college can then access.

The dashboards are shown in PowerBI. The reports are live reports. Nuventive is using the information to help those at the College write the summary. The summaries are written by faculty, administrators, and staff at the college.  Nuventive is not integrating and pulling in every Canvas field. Nuventive is writing a summary report that appears on the left. Nuventive can pull that rubric from Canvas because the college has a standard rubric. Nuventive can then roll up rubric level data into a PowerBI dashboard on the right. Assessment writers can then look at the dashboard and use that information to inform their narrative in the reports on the left. 

Nuventive is not integrating, Nuventive just posting it up and posting reports so the college can write about that information. Nuventive also gets a flat file from the college's student information system with the variables the institution is interested in, gender, race, or any other student information system variable the institution needs to disaggregate by. Nuventive can connect the Canvas learning management system data to the student information system data via student IDs and the college can see what is going on with any of these. That appears on the right side. The right side are interactive PowerBI dashboards.

Nuventive is not sucking data into the platform, Nuventive generates the report forms and the college can talk about the results, write the reports. The forms on the left are designed by Nuventive according to the specifications set by the college. 

As the representative said, "You send us the specifications. We use PowerBI, we have a library as a start and then you come back and say 'We want this color, we want a pie chart option.'" and Nuventive will deliver that. The dashboards are interactive - click on an element and the dashboard will reconfigure based on that element. 

The above dashboard, from the right hand panel, is an example of a dashboard showing disaggregation of mastery by student information system variables. This would be a result of a dashboard which joins together the Canvas data and the student information system variables. This is possible because the college has standardized outcomes scales already established in Canvas. 

The assessment writer can then look at the PowerBI dashboard on the right and write up their summary in the form on the left.

The flat files that are transferred into the Azure cloud are usually transferred on a predetermined cycle set by the institution. Cycles such as every six months or whatever is appropriate for the institution. Mid-cycle changes can be made in reports. 

Currently, in TracDat, the college has a reporting unit and an assessment unit. [At present] this is really a parent-child relationship [in TracDat]. But there isn't a need to think that way anymore. Nuventive Improve is much more flexible. [A child can have many parents, each also a child or parent to many other entities.] The college does not have to understand all of that. Nuventive is going to deliver these wonderful dashboards that let the college ask questions of the data without the college having to think of that anymore.

The college does not need to configure any of this. Nuventive knows how to set it up. The institution just tells Nuventive what the college needs and the Nuventive consultants get it set up for the college. And if six months later the college needs another field - no problem. Nuventive can assist the college. Nuventive can also share with the college what other ACCJC institutions are doing in terms of dashboards. 

The above is the four column report, still available in Nuventive Improve if an institution wants this particular report. 

The four column report would appear on the right allowing an assessment writer to fill out a form on the left reporting on the report. The four column report is a PDF - any PDF can be displayed on the right.

Nuventive Improve can also display any Microsoft Office document in the right hand panel. The new reports are generated in Microsoft Word, giving one the power of Word. This is the newer format for reports in Nuventive Improve.

Program review: periodically units are asked to reflect on a cycle such as every three years. The new form is a little more robust. If the college says, "Talk  to me about data trends, enrollment, graduation rates" then in the right hand panel Nuventive can expose reports prebuilt by Nuventive. 

COM-FSM Datastudio dashboard displayed by Nuventive

If the college's research department has already generated reports in Tableau or PowerBI, those can be displayed on the right as well. The writer can drag and drop from the dashboard on the right into the form on the left to memorialize what the writer was looking at when they wrote the report. If the resource has an URL, then the resource can be configured to display in the right hand panel. 

Nuventive can have multiple "plans" here. Nuventive can have goals, standards, criteria, whatever the terminology or language that is used in the institution. In the above example an institution is showing program outcome impact on Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) accreditation standards because that is what the institution needed. 

If the college wants to manage a process, Nuventive builds it out. Everything the college wants  assessors to do is played out in the custom menu. Nuventive is going to be the one to build the custom menu. Filters assist the writer.

For example, in the above dashboard a reporting period filter has been set in the dashboard on the right side. The dashboard can be filtered by unit, status, years, and method - with each of these filters being a decision made by the institution. The dashboard was built out by Nuventive using PowerBI and is interactive. The Nuventive Improve platform is in the Microsoft Azure cloud. The Nuventive platform relies on Microsoft Azure cloud services - PowerBI, Microsoft Office, and many other services. 

The college can see which units have outcomes. 

General education is always a hot button item. General education percent success rate by term versus institutional learning outcomes can be seen above. Filtering by one outcome, the critical thinking outcome one can see how many were assessed and how many were successful.

Clicking on Critical Thinking one can see the trend over three terms. The Nuventive platform can generate mappings such as the above which show the percent success rate for institutional level outcomes over a three term period. Note at the lower left the Delivery method, which the representative referred to as the "modality" is All. Each of those items on the left is an interactive filter, the institutional learning outcomes list is also a form of filter that can be clicked on.

The modality can also be mapped so we can look at just online courses for this ILO. Here we can see that critical thinking has dropped over this three term period. 

And we can remove that filter and see whether the trends are occurring more broadly for the online courses. 

The team in Micronesia asked about surfacing non-compliant data entry and failure to enter data. 

The Nuventive platform can be configured to display the data that the college needs to see. 

The team rephrased the question. The college needs to be able to see where there are non-compliances in a program that falls within a given faculty or division, what courses haven't been reported on and what program that falls under. Make follow-ups. The above screen shows that results have not been entered, but not which unit or coordinator is responsible for entering the missing data. 

The Nuventive representative noted that if this is information that is in the Nuventive system, Nuventive can generate the report. If Nuventive has the data, Nuventive can build the needed report. If Nuventive knows the courses and to which programs the courses belong, then the course level information can be surfaced. If that information is in the system, then Nuventive can report on it. Nuventive has undoubtedly already built that for an institution somewhere. The solution is available as long as the data is in the Nuventive platform. 

Custom reporting screens are part of the Nuventive solution. The above is a compliance checklist developed for an institution. 

The above Learning assessment dashboard was developed for another institution. These are all specified by the client to meet their needs.

Endnote observations solely by the author

Eliminating double data entry not going to happen

There is no true direct integration that automatically flows assessment data from Canvas to the Nuventive Improve platform. That is not how the Nuventive platform works. The platform exposes information in the right hand panel and those working on assessment use that information to complete forms in the left panel. In this sense the platform is a blend of a document management platform with database system. 

As Nuventive put it, "Nuventive does not suck data into the platform." The data entry to the Nuventive forms is a manual process. I had hoped to reduce the double data entry, but that goal remains an unrealized dream. This also means that assessment will occur after the term is over, and dashboards will update only a cycle set by negotiation between the college and Nuventive. That cycle will probably be something like a six month cycle in January and June after the term is over.

Addressing the need for assessment insights while a term is in progress

As noted above, Nuventive will remain a post-hoc after term manual data entry process. For more immediate insights into learning during a term, Canvas will still produce the outcome results reports that power the types of dashboards that have already been generated. The skill set to make and maintain these more basic near real time dashboards is not going to be beyond the skill set of an appropriately populated institutional research and assessment office.