The primary objective of the Assessment and Analytics team within Institutional Planning and Assessment (IPA) is to evaluate how we are progressing towards strategic goals, determine how we are performing relative to our peers, and provide insight to senior leaders of the university to facilitate evidence-based decision-making.  We do this by collecting, reviewing, and analyzing information about academic programs, research activities, organizational structures, and other post-secondary institutions that can assist in evaluating, predicting, and improving performance.  Our core activities include:

• developing and monitoring institutional metrics and key performance indicators;
• liaising with external agencies (e.g. U15 Data Exchange, Statistics Canada, Government of Saskatchewan, Universities Canada, ranking agencies) for data sharing and submissions;
• building and maintaining analytical, forecasting, and resource allocation models;
• monitoring and evaluating university rankings;
• conducting reviews of academic and/or administrative units and programs; and,
• implementing and/or facilitating institutional-level surveys.

These activities are integrated with other competencies, skills, and resources within IPA to support multi-year planning and resource allocation processes.

• integration of institutional reviews, surveys, and analysis into planning and resource allocation processes;
• awareness of success and impact of activities through annual reviews of progress against plans;
• understanding of which strategic initiatives are progressing and which initiatives may need to be reevaluated; and,
• integration of third-party information to assist with benchmarking and peer comparisons.

• implementation of statistical analysis techniques to attempt to identify correlations, determine cause and effect, and predict outcomes;
• rendering of innovative and informative data visualizations to identify revealing insights faster and accelerate decision making capabilities; and,
• insight on current trends and activities that will allow us to learn from what has happened in the past (reactive) that can be used towards analytics that indicate where we should go in the future (proactive).