Guide to the Report

This page can be reached by clicking on the "Questions" link at the bottom of the navigation bar on the left of every page of this report. Look in the lower half of the bar on the left for the link. I have circled it in the example below, but it is not circled on the bar itself.

The contents of the page you are currently looking at are shown below. You can click on each topic to jump to that part of the page, or you can simply scroll down the page to find a particular section.

Contents of this guide

1. Technical Contact: Whom do I call when you need a human to talk to?
2. General Contact Information: How do I contact the College in general?
3. Assumptions: What do I need to know to make sense of these instructions and most easily access the report?
4. The Navigation Bar: How do I get around in this report using the vertical bar on the left of each page?
5. Links: How do I recognize links to other documents or sections of this report, and how do I use them?
6. References: How do I find and access reference documents?
7. File Formats: What types of files are included in this report, and how do they work?
8. A Tour of the Report: What are the major sections of the report, and how do I navigate between them?
9. Internet Links: Where is this report linked to online resources that provide supporting documentation, and what potential problems may I encounter with these links?

1. Technical Contact

If you have a question about how this report works, if you come across something that doesn't make sense in the way it is organized, or for any other problem with this report, technical or content-related, please contact:

David Eubanks, Director of Planning, Assessment, and Information Services, SACS Liaison
deubanks@coker.edu
(843) 383-8082 (office)
(843) 383-8048 (fax)
(843) 383-9388 (home)
(843) 861-6652 (mobile)

300 E. College Ave.
Coker College, SC 29550

2. General Contact Information

Everyone at the College can be reached through the central switchboard at (843) 383-8000. Faxes can be sent to (843) 383-8048. If you would like to contact staff or faculty directly, you will find that email addresses are formed like this: <first initial><last name>@coker.edu.

3. Assumptions

You will have the most pleasant experience while using this report if you already have basic browser skills, such as clicking on links, using the 'Back' button to return to the previous page, switching between open windows, scrolling, etc. Usually, accessing a document opens a new window, but when you click on a button that switches to a different document, you will need to use the 'Back' button to return to the last page you saw. Moving between windows is easier if you are familiar with minimizing, restoring, and closing windows, i.e. using the buttons in the upper right corner of each window, as circled below.

You will also find useful the browser's ability to search a page for a term using the Find function under Edit on the menu bar at the very top of the page. You can see an example of its use in the References section below.

A 'perfect' setup for viewing the report is: a reasonably robust computer running a recent edition of Windows, Internet Explorer 6.0 with the screen resolution set at 1024 x 768 pixels and with text size set to 'medium', although other setups will work acceptably, too. Text size can be adjusted using the Text Size function on the View menu. We assume that you can view .pdf files. If not, you can download a free viewer from Adobe:

Although most of the material in the report is on the CD, there are many links to sites on the Internet. In order to access those, your computer will need to be hooked up to the Internet with a reasonably fast connection.

Because access speed to the CD will vary depending on your computer, you may choose to speed up access by copying the entire contents of the disk to a folder on your hard drive. Do create a new folder for this project, rather than copying the files to the root directory of the hard drive. If you are unsure how to do this, consult your information technology office. You will need about 700 MB of free disk space to copy the contents of the disk. You may want to create a shortcut on your desktop to the index page for the report (named index.html). When you then access that page with your browser, you can easily reach any other part of the report by clicking on links from there.

4. The Navigation Bar

This section describes the links on the golden vertical bar graphic to the left of each page.

There is a common format to each page of the report, with the College logo at the top of each page and a navigation bar to the left. The top graphic (the College logo) links to the College web site via the internet. The colored vertical bar to the left contains several links to documents you may want to look at frequently, such as the College catalog, bylaws, and so on. These documents are described below. The links on the image to the left are live: when you hover the mouse over them, you will see a description. These descriptions are also listed in the table below. You can also click to see where they go.

Note that if you scroll down a long page like this one, you won't be able to see the buttons on the navigation bar until you scroll back up again.

All of the links (except the first one, which takes you to the report's home page) open a new window with the appropriate page in it. That is, the old window is still there, underneath the window with the requested new document or page in it, and you may switch back and forth between the two windows. When you are finished looking at the new window, you can close it by clicking on the in the top right corner of the window.

5. Links

Most pages of this report contain hyperlinks, words or numbers on which you can click to go to a different page. They are identified in two ways. First, they are a different color from the rest of the text: they are a brighter blue. Secondly, when the mouse cursor 'hovers' over the link they appear as underlined. For example, the link below takes you to a website titled Snopes.com. Notice the difference in color. Put the mouse cursor over it and it should appear with an underline.

Example: Urban legends are debunked on the Snopes web site.

Hyperlinks to supporting documents appear as numbers in brackets, followed by a file type icon (a little i in a box). The significance of the number is explained in the next section (titled "References," below), and file types in the one that follows.

Example: The Board of Trustees granted sabbaticals with great gusto at the spring meeting [577].

Hyperlinked documents or sites will appear in a new window. As usual, you can close this window when you are finished with it by clicking on the .

6. References

References are cited using a document number in brackets. If you want to know why documents are numbered instead of named, you can find an explanation in the SQUID entry in the glossary. These references appear throughout the report. If the reference is to a specific part of the document in question, it will appear with a page reference. Because of screen limitations, you may have to scroll down a little to find the title of the specific section you are looking for, but the link should take you close to your target. Try it out in the following example:

Example: Colorful zigzag graphs are often used by Institutional Research, as in [693, p 4].

Each document reference is followed by an information icon . By hovering the mouse cursor over the icon, you can see the type, name, and source of the document, as shown below. Clicking either the icon or the document number will retrieve the document.

There are two indexes to all the reference documents. One is organized by the source of the document, i.e., which unit or department the document belongs to. So, for example, you can find all the Institutional Research reports in one place. The other index is organized sequentially by the reference number of the document. This is so that you can easily find documents for which you only know the number (if, for example, you printed out part of the report, and you wanted to look up a reference later). You might want to take a minute to familiarize yourself with each of these indexes, which are both linked from the navigation bar on the left. They are shown below.

On either of these pages (or any other), you can search for files of the type you want using the browser's built-in capability. The images below show the process (for Internet Explorer 6.0) of selecting the function Find on the Edit menu, which brings up the Find dialogue box shown in the second graphic below. By repeatedly clicking on the button Find Next, you can locate documents that interest you. Note that the Search function only searches in the titles and descriptions of the files, not in their contents.

The Find dialogue box is shown below. Type in the word you want to find.

If there are matches in the titles or descriptions, the window will jump to the match, and the search term will be highlighted.

The reference for each document contains the same information, as shown in the graph above. The cells contain, in order, the following information:

1. Owner Group The leftmost cell names the group that owns the document. This may be a campus office or an academic department or a committee. The academic year to which the document pertains or during which it was created appears parenthetically.
2. ID Number The second cell contains the unique document identification number, formatted in bold. This is the number that appears in brackets when the document is referenced. In the example you see above, [630] refers to the 2001-2 audit.
3. File Formats The third cell contains a list of file formats that are available for this document. Each is hyperlinked to the document in that format; you can access the document by clicking the desired file format. This is circled in red on the graphic above. In this example, there are two file types available, PDF and DOC, so you have a choice of preference. The different file types are described in the next section. Documents will open in a new window; as usual, you can close that window by clicking on the when you are finished. (Note: actual file formats for this document may differ from the ones shown in the example above, since file conversion is still in progress as this guide is being written).
4. Title The fourth cell shows the title of the document.
5. Description The last cell in the row contains a short description and/or selected keywords that may facilitate searching.

The example shown is from the primary document index, linked from the navigation bar. We decided to group documents by origin and pertinence, such as office, department, committee, etc. This grouping allows you to browse documentation that specifically deals with effectiveness or assessment activity, but also to get a better understanding of the workings of an office. Hopefully, it will also facilitate your search for a particular item.

On each page of the compliance certification, documents that are referenced in that section are summarized at the bottom in a table. The table contains links to all available formats of each document.

Some reference documents include references to documents that are not hyperlinked. These appear usually as numbers in brackets, although some authors took liberties with this convention and used parentheses, etc. instead. Either way, the intent should be clear from the context. Because these documents are not directly hyperlinked, you need to find them on the document index page, if you wish to view them.

Example: Document [1421] is a report from the Mathematics faculty on effectiveness improvements. In the report, we find the passage:

During the 2001-2002 academic year, Kaye Crook developed guidelines for standardizing the 100 and 200-level mathematics courses (1306), (1308), (1309).

The references to documents (1306), (1308), and (1309) are not hyperlinked. To bring up the actual documents, click on the Index button on the navigation bar, circled below. This link will take you to a table of documents.

Scroll down the page to find the documents in question, and click on the format you wish to see. It looks like the example shown below. Note that the table gives the same information, but the order of appearance of the first three columns is changed so that the document number is first.

In the example above, document 327 is available only in XLS format. To access the document, click on the XLS. If there are multiple formats available (e.g. HTML and PDF), click on the one you want. Formats are described in the next section.

On the pages of this report, references appear as numbers in brackets. When there is a choice, these links are connected to the HTML version of the document. If the reference is to a specific page number, the link will bring up the indicated page. Note that the link is to the top of the page, and you may have scroll down to find the specific section you are looking for. The second preferred file format type is PDF. For file types other than HTML, the document always opens to the first page. Specific page references can then be found by paging through the document.

7. File Formats

Because this report is browser-based, most documents are standard HTML files, a format that allows easy hyperlinking and quick retrieval. The documents used as references in the report, however, came from many different sources; therefore, they were written originally in a variety of formats. To ease accessibility, most of these have been converted into either HTML or PDF. Notice that a few files remain in other formats because they could not be converted or conversion didn't make sense. A description of each file type is shown in the table below.

Designation	Description	Requirements
DOC	Microsoft Word document	MS Word 2000 or later
GIF	Graphic image	no special requirements
HTML	Hypertext Markup Language	no special requirements
JPG	Graphic image	no special requirements
PDF	Adobe Portable Document format	Adobe acrobat reader
PPT	PowerPoint	Internet Explorer 6.0 or MS-PowerPoint 2002+
RTF	Rich Text Format	no special requirements
XLS	Excel spreadsheet	Internet Explorer 6.0 or MS-Excel 2002+

Almost all documents are available in either HTML or PDF or both. Note that references are followed by the information icon , which shows you the file format if you hover the mouse over the icon.

HTML This is the format used to create web pages. It can contain links, embedded graphics, tables, etc. These files are usually quick to load and easy to navigate. HTML allows linked citations to jump directly to a particular page of a document, something that PDF files on a CD cannot do. You can cut and paste text from most HTML documents in the usual way, by highlighting text, using Control-C to copy and Control-V to paste into a different document. HTML files are not convenient for printing documents, mainly because you would have to print each page individually. Many documents in the reference section were converted into HTML from some other format, so that you can easily access them, but they are also accessible in a PDF version. For printing, we suggest that you use the PDF version of the file.

Most of the HTML reference documents come with a navigation bar on the left (different from the blue and gold one on the report pages) that allows you to jump directly to certain pages. For an example, take a look at [137].

On the left side there is a navigation bar for that document:

This is different from the vertical blue and yellow navigation bar that is found to the left side of the pages of the report, which is NOT present on the reference documents. The navigation bar contains familiar icons to help you get around among pages of the document.

and jump to the first page and last page of the report, respectively.

jumps to the previous page or next page, respectively.

allows you to adjust the zoom level of the text (to make it appear larger or smaller).

allow you to jump directly to a page.

A few documents, such as the academic catalog, have named sections rather than page numbers on the navigation bar. See [510] for an example.

PDF This format requires the Adobe Reader to view. If you do not have it installed, you can obtain it from the linked image below:

PDF files are slower to load, but their advantage is that they appear on the screen just as they do in print. This is the preferred format for printing. Some documents in the reference section were scanned into digital format directly from paper and were then converted to PDF files. For these files, you will not be able to cut and paste text, although you can cut and paste the graphic images.

8. A Tour of the Report

Here we take a stroll through the sections of the report, and show you how to get from one section to another. Our point of departure is the navigation bar. We will look at all the major links and see where they lead. Each link is introduced with the graphic just as it appears on the navigation bar. These graphics are themselves hyperlinked, so you can click each one to open a new window containing the destination page. As usual, click the to close the window.

This links to the index of sections for the compliance certifications (you can click the graphic to the left). It also contains links to the following:

• Integrity Statement--a letter from the president and liaison stating Coker College's commitment to the process of reaccreditation described in the Principles of Accreditation.
• Report Preparation--a description of how this report was created.

Just to have a look, click on the graphic to open the page. Close it by clicking on when you have familiarized yourself with the contents.

The sections of the compliance report have a common format. The SACS requirement text appears in bold, followed by a statement about compliance. This statement is followed by a narrative to support the conclusion. In case of a partial compliance assessment, the section also contains an action plan for compliance.

Each section of the compliance certification contains links at the top and bottom to the previous and next section of the report, to allow you to quickly get to a nearby section.

These two links take you to the reference document indexes described above.

The profile contains information about the history of Coker College.

Click on the graphic to open the page. Close it by clicking on when you have familiarized yourself with the contents.

Take a quick look at the other information found here: recent enrollment history, links to profiles of incoming students, and descriptions of the facilities at all locations.

The chart consists of hyperlinked unit boxes, for example:

If you click on the yellow box, the library page appears.

Each such unit page contains:

• a brief description of the unit
• an outline of the organization of the unit, with job descriptions and resumes for key individuals referenced
• best practices
• an effectiveness plan
• a budget
• an effectiveness improvements narrative
• a detailed description of the function of the unit

Click on the graphic to open the page. Close it by clicking on when you have familiarized yourself with the contents.

This page consists of a table of academic programs, containing:

• a link to the catalog description
• the number of current students in the program, day and evening
• the number of recent graduates of the program, day and evening
• a link to the most recent effectiveness plan
• a link to the teaching roster, showing courses and credentials for that area
• a link to the departmental reference collection
• other links of interest, for example a departmental web page

Click on the graphic to open the page. Close it by clicking on when you have familiarized yourself with the contents.

This page contains a list of terms used throughout the report, such as Faculty Senate.

Click on the graphic to open the page. Close it by clicking on when you have familiarized yourself with the contents.

You will see an explanation of each term and appropriate documentation where required. These terms are then hyperlinked from the compliance report sections, so that the reader can choose whether or not to see the definition. This approach allows for less repetition throughout the report, and helps ensure consistency.

Example: The abbreviation GSSM is used in several sections. It refers to the South Carolina Governor's School for Science and Mathematics, which until 2003 shared the campus of Coker College. So a quote from a section might appear like this:

The departure of the GSSM allowed the College to increase its residence hall capacity.

If you click on the hyperlink, you will be treated to a short history of the relationship of these two schools. But if you are already familiar with it, the link and the explanation can just as easily be skipped. If the GSSM is mentioned several times on a page, usually only the first one will be hyperlinked to the glossary. There are exceptions for longer pages, where multiple links may be provided for the reader's convenience.

9. Internet Links

It was not possible to include all documentation on this CD. Some additional supporting material is found online. For example, we say that the academic catalog is published on the College web site, and of course we include a link to the web site where said catalog is published. In accordance with the SACS recommendations for electronic publication, we have made a 'frozen' copy of the entire College web site. Many links in this report will take you to that site, as will clicking on the College logo at the top of each report page. Because of the nature of the web, however, some of the links within that site will direct you back to the real, live Coker College website. It is not possible for us to weed the copy site of all such references. If you see perceived inconsistencies in the web site, it is most likely because you are comparing the (frozen, slightly out of date) copy to the live site. Although most likely this will not even be noticeable, we do apologize for any inconvenience or confusion this may cause. As with any problem or question, please contact the technical contact for this report if you wish.

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