The Association of Governing Boards of Colleges and Universities (AGB) has published the results of a study about governing boards and student learning assessment. The following quote is from a Chronicle article about the survey results. You can download the entire report from the AGB: How Boards Oversee Educational Quality. As well, AGB offers the book Making the Grade: How Boards Can Ensure Academic Quality, by Peter Ewell.

The report, "How Boards Oversee Educational Quality: A Report on a Survey on Boards and the Assessment of Student Learning," is based on a survey conducted in November 2009 that asked 1,300 chief academic officers and chairs of board committees on academic affairs how boards oversee academic quality. The response rate was 38 percent, with 28 percent of trustees and 58 percent of chief academic officers participating. Almost one-quarter of the respondents were from public institutions, and three-quarters were from private institutions.

Results of the survey were mixed, Ms. Johnston said. While slightly more than half of respondents said boards spend more time discussing student-learning outcomes now than they did five years ago, 61.5 percent said boards do not spend sufficient time in meetings on the issue. A smaller proportion—38.5 percent—said enough time was spent on the subject in board meetings.

"There is plenty of room for improvement," Ms. Johnston said

Ohio University wanted to get started with analytics (business intelligence) but didn't have much money. This Campus Technology magazine case study explains how they did it and what they learned:

Also working to give input and feedback to Wykoff's team was a committee of various users. That committee, which has met weekly for a year and continues to meet and give input, includes representatives from budgeting, finance, the registrar, the bursar, and other academic personnel. As the group gains an understanding of just what BI solutions can do, Wykoff said, excitement is building. "There's starting to be a little line [of people] saying, "How can we get on the BI list and be next?'"

One lesson Wykoff offered as the project moves into its second year is this: Delivering the right data to end users through BI is an iterative process. "Once [users] see the data, they're going to ask a different set of questions [than the first time around], or realize some assumptions," she noted. That makes BI different from a more traditional software development project, in which user needs are researched, then a system is installed, modified, and left to run.