Assessment and Measurement

Learn how to get the best return on investment of your precious time and resources.

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Assessment

Before we can improve our communication efforts, we must fully understand what they look like and how they are resonating with intended audiences. Additionally, we must test and experiment with different modes of communication so that we can better determine what works well, what may need some enhancement, and what isn't working at all. This type of assessment will allow us to spend our time most effectively by doing the work that reaches students and eliminating the work that isn't showing the return on investment.

Find plenty of assessment resources, including focus group best practices, AI and data prompting, and more.

Questions? Contact Madison Speck, our Student Affairs liaison in the Office of Institutional Research.

Intake Form

The CMU Assessment & Data Request Intake Form collects information to help us understand your assessment, data, evaluation goals, review your request, and determine the appropriate level of support needed for your request.

The more information you provide, the better we can assess your needs, identify potential approaches, estimate the scope of support that may be required, and determine whether additional consultation is needed.

Complete the CMU Assessment & Data Request Intake Form

UTM codes: Track your efforts easily

UTM stands for "Urchin Tracking Module." Urchin was a software company that Google acquired, and it served as the basis for what we now know as Google Analytics. A UTM code is a short set of parameters added to a URL to track where website traffic comes from. UTM codes help us understand which communications channels and campaigns, such as emails, newsletters, social media posts or digital ads, drive visitors to our website. By using consistent UTM codes, we can measure the effectiveness of our communications and make more informed, data-driven decisions.

For example: If we want to see how many website visitors came to the Housing Accomodations page on the Conference & Event services website, we would add some keywords that Google Analytics can track. Let's say that link went out in an email newsletter. The URL would go from this:

https://www.cmu.edu/conferences/accommodations/index.html

To this:

https://www.cmu.edu/conferences/accommodations/index.html?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fall-2026

This means that the link was sent in an email, from Mailchimp as part of the Fall 2026 marketing efforts. Using these keywords, we can distinguish where web traffic comes from (QR codes, email, social media, etc.) which helps us determine what works best for our target audience and where to focus our efforts.

There are many tools available to help you create these codes. This is an easy, reliable one:

Google Analytics Campaign URL Builder

The important thing is consistency and tracking the keywords and parameters that you used. This will differ by department, and Bill and Rachel are happy to assist. Keep an eye out here for more information about best practices for selecting, tracking and interpreting UTM parameters.

UTM Code Tracker Template