About Us

The IDEA Center is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to serve colleges and universities committed to improving learning, teaching, and leadership performance. The Center supports the evaluation and development of both programs and people. To stay on the cutting edge, The IDEA Center's experts constantly evaluate and reevaluate our services. Extensive data collection, research, and feedback from our clients have resulted in continuous enhancement of our services. The emphasis of The IDEA Center always remains on improving teaching, learning, and the higher education process.

Individual Development and Educational Assessment

Benchmarked Assessment Products for Higher Education

The success of your institution of higher education is the reason The IDEA Center exists. As a nonprofit organization, we have partnered since 1975 with colleges and universities across the country to reach the same goal — continuous individual and institutional improvement and achievement.

With a range of nationally normed, research-driven, flexible assessment services, The IDEA Center helps faculty members solicit feedback and evaluate teaching as it relates to curricular goals and the measurement of learning. We help faculty, deans, administrators, and department chairs assess how their own and the institution’s objectives are realized.

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Our Mission

The IDEA Center's Mission is to serve colleges and universities committed to improving learning, teaching, and leadership performance.

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The Center's History

The IDEA Student Ratings System originated at Kansas State University during the 1968-69 school year. Its emphasis was unique, as it provided constructive feedback aimed at improving the quality of instruction and student learning.

During the next seven years, the system was perfected and refined to assist in the improvement of instruction at Kansas State University. With help from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, The IDEA Center was established in 1975 and the IDEA Student Ratings system was made available to other colleges and universities. Since that time, other systems have been added to assist institutions in the assessment and improvement of administrator performance. IDEA Feedback for Department Chairs, IDEA Feedback for Deans, and IDEA Feedback for Administrators serve to provide information to assist higher education leaders to become more effective.

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What Makes IDEA Unique?

IDEA services are built on an extensive, nation-wide research program and provide critical insight to guide personal and programmatic reflection. Each service offers targeted feedback for improving personal performance – while positively impacting the institution’s processes and outcomes.

These three goals—insight, improvement, impact—lie at the heart of our model, which involves:

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Our Research, Resources and Training

As a nonprofit organization, The IDEA Center is committed to an aggressive research agenda that objectively explores both the efficacy of our services as well as the potential and limitations of constituent feedback systems for improving instruction, administration, leadership, and institutions.

On this site, you will find an entire knowledge base of research papers, technical reports, and studies addressing issues from curriculum and instructional theory, to best practices for evaluation systems, to detailed support for our services, including customized training opportunities.

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