AAC&U Engagement

The Values Institute Civic Engagement Project 

The AAC&U (American Association of Colleges and Universities) Advancing Evidence on Civic and Community-Based Engagement in Higher Education initiative is a new project designed to develop national baselines for student performance on civic outcomes.

Funded by a grant from the Lumina Foundation, this project supports the synthesis and development of national research on the role of higher education in fostering students’ civic skill-building through community-based engagement and other high-impact practices.

The AAC&U project has two goals:

  •  To produce a synthesis of the existing research on active teaching and learning practices commonly known as “high-impact practices,” or HIPs. 
  • To create new national baselines on students’ demonstrated performance on civic outcomes developed through AAC&U’s Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education (VALUE) Institute.

Know more about AAC&U   

 

Data produced by the AAC&U Civic Evidence Project will provide insights into how UM compares with other Universities on students’ overall civic engagement. Additionally, the scores and feedback will assess how curricular and co-curricular opportunities on campus are engaging students with the Miami community at large.

 

Get Engaged

The office of Civic and Community engagement is currently collecting student artifacts from Spring 2020 - Fall 2021. Spring 2022 submissions are due by May 18th, 2022.   

Please access our qualtrics form if you are ready to submit artifacts, and our FAQ document if you have any questions. You may also email us at civicengagement@miami.edu with any further queries. 

Qualtrics Form     FAQ document 

Participating Universities follow the process below:

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  • Registration

    Uiversities interested in the VALUE Institute follow the registration phase from November through March. Here, intitutions create an account, complete an application and MOU, and submit their application payment.

  • Onboarding

    Accepted intitutions are provided the details necessary to get prepared for the rest of the process.

  • Recruitment and Sampling

    This phase asks participants to complete a sampling plan, which helps intitutions/ consortia develop a plan to collect student artifacts and assignments. AAC&U provides feedback on the submit sampling plans and participants cement the best process for themselves to go forward with the next phase.

  • Student artifact collection, preparation and submittal

    Participating institutions collect student artifacts and metadata necessary for the AAC&U to review and process. As a selected university, the University of Miami will submit student work ("artifacts") connected with the civic outcomes through engagement in a range of HIPs.  

  • Scorer training and Scoring

    Scorer training is an asynchronous, self-paced course that certifies participants ad VALUE scorers that may be paid to score work for the VALUE Institute. Free Scorer training is provided for members of participating universities. 

    Scoring happens in the summer from forty to sixty days. Submit artifacts are scored against the VALUE rubric by scorers not affiliated to the institution that submit the work being reviewed. 

  • Reporting

    AAC&U submits personal reports to each institution that is the aggregate of all the artifacts that were submit and scored from their cohort. A landscape of learning report is also released by AAC&U as an overall benchmark evaluation.

  • Next Steps and Consultation

    AAC&U provides the opportunity for institutions to request consultation for help interpreting institutional reports. Suggestions for future action in the institution are also provided.