Established in 1969, the Office of Institutional Analysis (OIA) supports the strategic use of institutional information and decision support at University of Calgary by providing analytical resources, institutional research, and guidance for informed decision-making, institutional assessment, policy formulation, and strategic planning. As part of our mandate to develop a data-informed university, the OIA collaborates and liaises with both internal and external stakeholders to build analytical capacity, data literacy and data governance at the institutional level.
Vision
Empowering the University of Calgary to be data-informed.
Mission
The Office of Institutional Analysis (OIA) facilitates data-informed decision-making by providing institutional data & research, analysis, and guidance to support UCalgary’s mission, strategic planning, statutory and regulatory obligations, and the improvement of programs and services.
OIA's core services include conducting qualitative and quantitative analysis, research and reporting to guide policy, support strategic decision making, planning, and assessment at the University. We collect, analyze, and interpret university data for the purposes of assessing institutional outcomes, measuring institutional performance and comparative analysis, and report to campus constituencies and external agencies.
OIA works with national and international ranking agencies to collect, synthesize and submit university data for the purposes of ranking and peer comparison. We also analyze and report the outcomes of the rankings to support understanding and planning.
Learn more about how UCalgary is doing in Canada and globally
The Fact Book provides statistical information about the institution. The primary purpose of the Fact Book is to provide planners and decision-makers with the information they need to assess and improve the programs and services provided to our community.
OIA is the business owner for the UCalgary Qualtrics site license, and the main point of contact for the design, administration, analysis and reporting of major institutional surveys conducted at the University of Calgary. We offer a wide-ranging number of survey training and survey support services for support staff, and a limited number of Qualtrics support services to academic staff and students.
The Quality Assurance (QA) program at the University of Calgary includes Academic Unit Reviews, Curriculum Reviews, external accreditation, and department reviews. OIA collaborates with faculties, departments, and units to facilitate their QA process through information gathering and reporting.
OIA facilitates the development, tracking, and maintenance of institutional and strategic metrics for the Academic and Research Plans, the Comprehensive Institutional Plan (CIP), Community Report and other Institutional strategies. We collaborate with data trustees, stewards, and other units to collect, manage and report the data needed for the metrics.
Universal Student Ratings of Instruction (USRI) is the course survey used at the University of Calgary to collect student feedback on credit courses. These surveys occur throughout the academic year for each term, in order to provide anonymous feedback to the university, as well as results to all students in the institution. The OIA coordinates the USRI program and works with several dozen administrative contacts throughout UCalgary’s academic offices, Printing Services, and IT. This program administration helps with the creation, distribution, completion, scanning, and reporting stages.
In collaboration with business units across the institution, OIA supports the university’s data governance initiative with the aim of supporting the usage of strategic data assets with confidence. Data Governance is an enablement framework for the specification of decision rights and accountability to encourage desirable behavior in the valuation, creation, storage, use, archiving and deletion of data.
The U15 Data Exchange group (U15DE) helps develop and enhance the distinctive mission of the U15 and its advocacy objectives, through the formal and informal exchange of data sets and information. OIA represents the University of Calgary at the U15 Data Exchange and submits data to U15DE for benchmarking projects.