Social-media based assessment of academic programs

Abstract

Academic programs are evaluated and assessed to control the quality and improvement of the program offering. The evaluation process involves assessing a set of learning outcomes indicating what the graduate can and is able to do after graduation. A wide range of tools exists to assess the extent to which the learning outcomes are met, such as employer surveys, student ratings, test scores and student self-reports. Each of these assessment tools suffer from a set of drawbacks, which limits its applicability. For example, surveys have the drawback of low response rate, correctness of the result, and time of conducting the survey. This paper presents a robust assessment method that analyzes information posted by alumni on their social media accounts, such as LinkedIn. This new method is not intended to replace existing assessment tools, but to complement them. The method is continuous and not restricted to any period of time. The paper uses a case study, where more than 100 LinkedIn student profiles were analyzed to show the feasibility of the method.