Institutional research

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Institutional research at Conestoga

Conestoga's Office of Institutional Research and Planning (IR) is an information and analytical resource for the Conestoga community and external organizations, like the Ministry of Colleges and Universities. The IR team collects, organizes, validates, analyzes, and disseminates institutional and external data to ensure quality, accountability, student success and continuous improvement.

IR collaborates with other college departments on various assessment and evaluation activities, including:

  • Analysis to ensure new programs are feasible and sustainable in today's market and that existing programs maintain quality, innovation and sustainability
  • Developing and administering program review processes to ensure the quality of educational programming
  • Gathering and sharing feedback from students about professors' teaching
  • Analysis and reporting of student, graduate and employer satisfaction surveys
  • Custom survey development, administration and analysis for academic and service areas
  • Supporting enrolment planning, forecasting and recruitment
  • Performance metrics development, monitoring and analysis
  • Developing and maintaining dashboards on retention, program statistics, grades and more (Conestoga login ID and password required)

The IR team is committed to providing balanced and data-driven expertise with integrity. A consultative and collaborative approach allows for flexibility in adapting to meet the needs of stakeholders. IR follows the Canadian Institutional Research and Planning Association's Code of Ethics.

Looking for more information?

Conestoga listens

Conestoga values input from our students and uses it to inform many college and program-level decisions. Current students can expect to receive survey participation requests for various surveys during the academic year, though not all students receive invitations to every survey.

Answers are always kept completely confidential. Survey responses help identify broad trends and build a statistics-based understanding of student opinions and perceptions.

The surveys include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • the Early Course Check-In survey. This survey provides faculty with feedback to reflect on courses early in the term.
  • the Student Appraisal of Teaching survey. This survey provides course-level feedback for faculty near the end of term.
  • the Annual Student Feedback Survey. This survey occurs in early November and allows students to give in-depth feedback on specific Conestoga services.
  • the province-wide Ontario College Student Experience Survey. This survey occurs in February, June, and November, and focuses on program-level feedback to assure quality.

If you have any questions about Conestoga Listens student feedback opportunities, please contact institutionalresearch@conestogac.on.ca.

Graduate satisfaction survey

All Conestoga students will be asked to participate in phone surveys that help measure the college's effectiveness in preparing graduates for employment success. The surveys will take place at approximately six months and then again at two years after graduation.

  • The purpose of these provincial surveys is to measure Conestoga's effectiveness in preparing graduates for the workplace.
  • The results impact the college's level of provincial funding and help determine future curriculum and program direction.

The survey phone calls are from Forum Research Canada, the firm contracted by the Ministry of Colleges and Universities. They collect information for the graduate satisfaction survey and, with the graduate's approval, the employer satisfaction survey.

Contact

Internal stakeholders (i.e., faculty, staff, students) wishing to conduct program quality improvement or program evaluation research should contact Institutional Research and Planning at 519-748-5220, ext. 2746 or institutionalresearch@conestogac.on.ca.