SelfDesign® Learning Community recently received a glowing performance re-accreditation from the pre-eminent Cognia network.
The re-accreditation — SelfDesign’s second since it was first accredited by Cognia in 2011 — demonstrates the school’s continuing success at meeting the needs of its learners and families and helps us see where we can improve further.
Cognia offers accreditation and certification, assessment, professional services and consulting within a framework of continuous improvement. Based out of the U.S., the not-for-profit, non-partisan organization has been accrediting schools around the world for more than 100 years with a commitment to ensure schools meet and exceed performance standards and to help them improve.
Cognia’s digital self-assessment framework for online schools helped focus SelfDesign’s process, says SelfDesign Learning Community Principal Catherine Dinim. The new framework was developed largely in response to the pandemic, when many schools around the world temporarily became online schools and the process and matrix used for brick-and-mortar schools were less relevant.
“For our re-accreditation self-assessment, we undertook surveys and went through different parts of our learning platform as we worked through the self-assessment based on Cognia’s performance standards,” Catherine says. “We did a lot of thinking, looking at the data that we had collected, figuring out the patterns and what they were telling us, and then based on the data and analysis, determining plans and possible goals for further continuous improvement. It was a big process.”
High scores on performance standards
SelfDesign scored higher than the Cognia school network average on all performance standards.
Consultant Mary Gervase was one of the education professionals on the Cognia team that reviewed SelfDesign’s re-accreditation. She says, “SelfDesign Learning Community demonstrated once again their fidelity to their long-established mission of providing all students equal access to a high-quality, high-touch, technology-enabled, authentic, personalized learning experience. The SelfDesign leadership and community are commended for continuing to redefine the parameters of how, where, and when learning can occur.”
Although being accredited by Cognia means adopting a continuous improvement mindset across all school activities, the re-accreditation team flagged two areas for additional focused improvement. They noted that SelfDesign Learning Community could:
- more actively engage families in the support of school priorities and guiding principles that help to promote learners’ academic growth and well-being, and
- expand the collection of trend data to inform decision-making about programs, strategies and practices that impact learner’s growth, well-being and learning.
Benefits beyond re-accreditation
The process overall, says Catherine, was also extremely helpful in preparing SelfDesign Learning Community for the BC Ministry of Education and Childcare’s new assessment and quality assurance (AQA) process for provincial online schools.
“Cognia’s new self-assessment framework for online schools is so good, and it’s asking us to show up with a game plan,” she says. “The Cognia framework provides a way of thinking about how we make decisions and how we improve and deepen and expand what we offer as a school. Because of that, I feel we’re well prepared for what’s coming as we move into the early stages of the BC Ministry AQA process.”
Benefits for learners and families
The Cognia re-accreditation also brings benefits and broadens opportunities to learners and families.
At commencement, all SelfDesign learners will receive a SelfDesign certificate with the Cognia seal, indicating that the school meets Cognia’s performance standards.
“Having a B.C. Dogwood Certificate will help gain a learner admittance into most universities in Canada,” says Nikki Kenyon, who managed SelfDesign’s re-accreditation process, “but identifying that SelfDesign is also accredited by Cognia can improve a learner’s chances of getting into many U.S. schools, particularly not-for-profit post-secondary schools that are also Cognia accredited.”
It can also help younger learners be accepted into programs or schools internationally, Catherine says. “If a SelfDesign family moves or is posted to work overseas and is looking at enrolling their children in online programs or brick-and-mortar schools around the world, from China to South Africa to the UAE, the Cognia accreditation may help with the intake conversations. The family will be able to say, ‘We’ve come from a unique educational environment and our last report card looks different than what you might expect, but it’s from a Cognia-accredited school.’”
