FAQ BEVI Assessment Process for Program Leaders

Starting spring break 2025, all students participating in a departmental program will be expected to complete both a pre and post assessment. Further information may be found to the Study Abroad Assessment Initiative page.  

Below are frequently asked questions regarding the assessment. Please contact the study abroad office if you have further questions that are not included below.

Review this short video regarding how you can support the assessment effort:

Which programs are required to utilize the BEVI Assessment?
All Departmental study abroad programs will require that students take the BEVI assessment both pre and post program. For students that do not feel comfortable taking the BEVI, there is an alternative essay assignment that is available. 
May program leaders use an alternate assessment tool?

All program students must complete the pre/post BEVI or the alternative essay, however, we also encourage program leaders to incorporate additional assessment tools as program needs may require assessment of categories not measured by the BEVI. 

How will students be informed that they need to take the BEVI?

Program leaders should add the expectation to take the pre and post assessments into their program syllabus. Pre-program assessment will be available to students at least one month prior to the program start date. Students may access the pre-program assessment via their Accepted Student - My Study Abroad page which contains the following BEVI instructions. Post-program assessments will be available via their Return Student - My Study Abroad page after the end date of the program. Program leaders are encouraged to provide specific due dates for pre and post assessments.

Are program leaders responsible for collecting and distributing the assessment information?

Program leaders are responsible for ensuring students take the pre and post assessment by adding the requirements to their syllabus and tracking the completion via their Program Leader Portal. Program leaders are encouraged to schedule a specific time and place for students to complete pre and post assessments. For example, at the end of pre-departure meetings, or during travel time at the end of the program. Another way to increase response rates is to assign completion points for both assessments in the gradebook. This should reduce the amount of follow-up or delinquent submissions. 

Students will be provided with individual assessment reports as well as confirmation of completion. Students are required to upload this confirmation to their My Study Abroad page for completion tracking by program leaders. 

CILMAR will collect the assessment data and provide the aggregate data to program leaders two weeks prior to program start date (or after all students have completed the assessment). The post assessment data will be available within two months of program completion. 

May I review the questions included in the BEVI or alternate assessment?

Program leaders that would like to review the BEVI questions will need to request access to take the BEVI. Email requests may be sent to cilmar@purdue.edu.

 

Students that choose not to take the BEVI, may take the alternate assessment:

What if my student has already completed the BEVI for a different program?

Post-program BEVI submissions from a recent program may in some cases be used as the pre-program assessment for an upcoming program. The post-program BEVI must be less than 6 months old to be valid. Students, along with their program leader, must submit a formal request for this exception to CILMAR (cilmar@purdue.edu) one month prior to the program departure date.  If approved, students will be able to upload the post-program completion document from the previous program to their pre-program assessment submission on their Accepted Student – My Study Abroad page. 

Students will be required to complete a post program assessment for each program they are associated with. 

Is there a cost associated with the BEVI assessment?

No, CILMAR has secured an institutional license for all of Purdue University. There is no individual per-assessment cost. 

Are faculty able to utilize the assessment result for their own research purposes?

Yes.

Why do we need to do the assessment and why the BEVI?

Assessment is an integral part of program design, both in measuring efficacy of the curriculum and in providing insight into what is working, what is not, and where improvements can be made. The BEVI was chosen because of its high validity and reliability, the broad scope of its measurements, and its past success in being paired with the Global Engaged Learning (GEL) Index at other institutions to enhance programs engaged in global learning and internationalization. 

The BEVI and GEL will be used by Purdue University as a standardized measure to assess the efficacy of all Departmental study abroad programs. Meta-Analysis Reports will be provided to each college detailing the impact of each program within their units each year. Additionally, an institution-wide report will be provided to the Vice President of Global Partnerships and Programs. 

Are BEVI and GEL validated instruments?
The Beliefs, Events, and Values Inventory (BEVI) is an internationally recognized instrument for analyzing sophisticated demographic information about who learners are and assessing a number of capacities that are instrumental to positive life and career optimization such as: complex thinking capacities, tolerance for ambiguity, openness to differences, emotional attunement, social responsibility, self-awareness, and care for the environment (Shealy, 2016). The BEVI is a good choice for large-scale data collection not only in terms of cost-effectiveness but also because the extensive demographics items allow for nuance analysis within and between groups. With over 150,000 administrations worldwide in several languages, the BEVI has been used widely in higher education over the past 30 years (BEVI, LLC, 2024), especially in global learning contexts. The instrument's constructs are well-aligned with STEM undergraduate competencies, especially the first five student outcomes articulated by ABET (2024): complex problem-solving, culturally appropriate solutions, adaptive communication, ethical responsibility, and teaming. The Globally Engaged Learning (GEL) index is a tool based on the 7D global learning experience design framework established by Wandschneider and colleagues (2015) that gleans program data from the designers (faculty leaders). After undergoing a validation process via expert review, the instrument was statistically validated in a pilot with the BEVI in a multi-institutional study funded by the Colonial Academic Alliance (Wiley et al., 2019).