Institutional Research Seminar about University Educational Activities Conducted via Collaboration between Faculty Members and Administrative Staff

Institutional research (hereafter referred to as “IR?) activities in Japanese universities have shifted from the introductory stage in which organizations were set up to the productive period of embodying their activities. The fundamental task of IR relating to education is to collect data from a questionnaire survey of students about their learning activities and various teaching data as provided by the university administrative office, and to thereby objectively determine the strengths and weaknesses of the university. Furthermore, it is important to promote detailed analysis by collaborating with each department in the university to make use of this in educational improvement. However, the IR organization structure varies depending on the university. Therefore, it is difficult to use a single educational evaluation model commonly applied to every university. For this reason, the IR staff at each university is seeking a number of concrete examples leading to educational improvement such as the type of data used, analysis examples, and useful procedures. In this paper, we report examples of IR seminars held by Hokkaido University through collaboration with the administrative staff and faculties. This is an important and meaningful example of one type of IR activity