Purdue Elements - FAQ

Elements is Purdue’s centralized faculty activity reporting system. It is accessed using Purdue login credentials and is used to document scholarly & creative works, grants, service & engagement, and teaching & learning activities.

The Elements homepage profile will be used for institutional reporting and will also be used by faculty to populate their public profiles (Discovery module launching in calendar year 2026).

Elements also has a workflow assessment module which is used to document faculty annual performance and merit reviews. Activity records from the faculty member’s homepage profile are auto populated into the annual performance review exercise.

Elements is Purdue’s internal faculty reporting tool that combines university data sources with self-entered information, allowing faculty to review and update their own scholarly, teaching, and service activities. It supports processes such as annual performance and merit reviews.

Academic Analytics is an external benchmarking platform that compiles publicly available research data to provide institutional leaders with comparative insights across peer institutions; faculty cannot edit or add information in this system.

Several university and external data sources automatically feed information into Elements, including:

• Sponsored Programs – grant and research award data
• Banner – teaching activity
• Watermark – summarized course evaluations
• Human Resources – Employment classification and user access information to populate profiles and enable login.
• Bibliographic databases – publication data from sources such as Web of Science, SCOPUS, CiNii EN/JP, and SSRN.
• Digital Measures – For colleges that historically used Digital Measures, relevant data was migrated to Elements.

Homepage profile

All faculty members and lecturers have continuous access to their individual homepage profiles in Elements and may update them throughout the year.

Administrative staff who support faculty reporting also have access to the system; however, they can only view or edit those faculty homepage profiles which have been delegated to them.

Annual Performance Review Exercise

Faculty annual performance reviews are completed in Elements and all faculty have access to only their own annual performance review exercise.

The department/school head selects reviewer assignments for faculty annual performance reviews, and reviewers will only have access to and complete evaluations for the individuals assigned specifically to them.

Elements simplifies faculty reporting by capturing activities across scholarly research, grants, service & engagement, and teaching in one system. Only individuals assigned specific administrator roles in Elements such as the College Success Managers may pull reports for their units.

• Phase 1 – Launched January 2024: Importing data, testing, and training
• Phase 2 – Launched January 2025: Annual Performance Review module
• Phase 3 – Expected 2026: Discovery Module
• Phase 4 – TBD: Impact Module.

Submit a support ticket via the TDX system. Colleges also have College Success Managers (CSM) who provide training and support.

Institutional Data Analytics + Assessment (IDA+A) manages Elements on behalf of the Office of the Provost, in collaboration with Purdue IT, college representatives, and other campus partners.

Maintaining accurate and well-organized records in Elements ensures that faculty profiles and institutional reports remain complete and reliable. The following guidance outlines common scenarios and recommended actions.

• Publications
  • Journal Articles
    Journal articles are categorized as peer reviewed or non-peer reviewed. System-harvested records default to peer reviewed, but this activity type can be easily changed to non-peer reviewed by the faculty. Faculty should review existing records for accuracy and select the correct type when adding new articles.
  • Preprints and Publications
    Both preprints and final publications remain in Elements. Faculty may either remove the preprint record once the final publication is added or merge the two records. In either case, duplicate entries should be cleaned up to maintain accurate reporting.
• Teaching and Course Development
  • Course Development
    Course development activities should be manually entered under Learning & Teaching → Course Developed.
  • Student Mentoring and Advising
    Student mentoring and advising records are not automatically imported from other systems and should be added manually.
    • Graduate students (advisor, committee member, mentor): record under Learning & Teaching → Directed Student Learning.
    • Undergraduate students: record under Learning & Teaching → Student Mentoring or Service & Engagement → Consulting/Advisory.
• Conference and Presentation Activities
  • Proceedings, Conferences, Presentations, and Posters
    Placement of scholarly outputs may vary by discipline. Faculty are encouraged to consult their College Success Manager (CSM) for guidance on discipline-specific conventions.
    
    If uncertain on how to categorize these activities, the following general suggestions apply:
    • Proceedings: Typically peer reviewed and published with a DOI. Recommended to record as Journal Article – Peer Reviewed.
    • Conference: Participation in an academic or professional conference through the delivery of scholarly content. This includes oral presentations, panel discussions, or roundtables. Conference contributions are typically selected through peer or editorial review and may be based on submitted abstracts or proposals.
    • Presentation: A formal delivery of scholarly or professional content to an audience, typically at workshops, institutional, or industry events. Presentations may be oral, visual, or multimedia and are often use to share research findings, pedagogical innovations, or creative work.
    • Poster: A visual presentation delivered at a conference or event, either physical or digital.