The visiting team arrives on Monday. By Tuesday afternoon, they have stopped reading your self-study narrative and started asking for evidence. What they ask for, how they ask for it, and what they do with what they find determines the tone of the entire visit.
Most coordinators discover what visiting teams actually look for only after their first site visit. The questions are rarely in the manual. They are learned through experience, peer advice, and occasionally embarrassment when a document cannot be produced on short notice.
This post is a preview. It covers the three evidence categories visiting teams always request, the questions that signal they are probing deeper, the gaps that raise red flags, and how to organize your evidence so nothing falls through the cracks.
The Three Evidence Categories Visiting Teams Always Request
CEAB visiting teams do not arrive with a random checklist. Their review follows a predictable pattern shaped by the Manual of Accreditation Procedures and years of evaluating Canadian engineering programs. Regardless of discipline or institution size, every visiting team will request evidence from three categories.
Program Documentation
This is the foundation. The team needs to understand your program before they can evaluate it. Expect requests for:
- The current program specifications document — including the curriculum map, graduate attribute definitions, and the I-R-M (Introduction-Reinforcement-Mastery) progression for each attribute.
- The self-study narrative — which they will have read before the visit, but they will reference it throughout.
- Program outcomes and graduate attribute alignment — how your program maps to the eight CEAB Graduate Attributes and the specific indicators under each.
- Faculty qualifications and licensure compliance — the updated requirements are covered in our post on CEAB faculty licensure changes.
These documents prove your program is structured and intentional. A program without a current specifications document is a program the visiting team cannot evaluate, because there is no baseline to measure against.
Course-Level Evidence
This is where most visits live or die. The visiting team will select specific courses and ask to see the evidence that proves those courses deliver on their mapped Graduate Attributes.
Typical requests include:
- Course syllabi — current, not from last cycle, showing learning outcomes aligned to Graduate Attributes.
- Assessment instruments — exams, rubrics, project guidelines, lab reports that measure specific indicators.
- Student work samples — anonymized examples that demonstrate the assessment was actually administered and scored.
- Assessment data and results — aggregated scores, rubric distributions, or competency breakdowns showing what students achieved.
As we discussed in our post on evidence quality, not all evidence is equal. A syllabus that mentions "critical thinking" is not evidence that students develop critical thinking. A rubric that exists but was never used to assess student work is not evidence. The visiting team knows the difference.
Continuous Improvement Evidence
This category separates programs that are truly self-improving from programs that are just compliant. The visiting team wants to see that assessment data leads to action.
They will ask for:
- Assessment review meeting minutes — records of when and how faculty reviewed assessment results.
- Action plans — documented decisions made in response to assessment findings, with responsible parties and timelines.
- Outcomes from previous cycles — what changed since the last accreditation visit, and how those changes were measured.
- Closing-the-loop documentation — proof that a finding from one assessment cycle led to a curriculum change, which was then reassessed in the next cycle.
We explored this in detail in our post on closing the loop. The key takeaway: the visiting team does not expect perfection. They expect a process. If you assessed a Graduate Attribute, found a gap, made a change, and reassessed — that is a complete story. If you assessed, found nothing, and took no action, that is a story they will question.
The Questions That Signal Deep Scrutiny
Visiting teams are polite, professional, and experienced. They rarely say "this is inadequate." Instead, they ask questions that reveal whether your program has done the work. These are the questions that should make a coordinator sit up and pay attention.
"Show me how this assessment maps to this specific graduate attribute."
This question tests traceability. If a course claims to address Graduate Attribute 3 (problem analysis) at the Mastery level, the visiting team wants to see the specific assessment items that measure problem analysis — not general course outcomes, not a rubric that covers five attributes at once. They want to see the thread from the Graduate Attribute definition to the course outcome to the assessment item to the student result.
Programs that maintain a connected evidence map — where every piece of evidence is explicitly linked to the indicator it supports — answer this question in seconds. Programs that rely on a spreadsheet of folder paths answer it in minutes of searching, if they find it at all.
"What did you do with the results from last year's assessment?"
This is the continuous improvement question in its most direct form. The visiting team is testing whether assessment is a real process or an accreditation exercise. If the answer is "we filed the results," or "we discussed them at a meeting," the team will probe further. If the answer includes specific actions taken, responsible parties, and follow-up measurements, the question closes.
As we noted in our post on keeping evidence current, the best programs collect and act on assessment data every year, not just during accreditation cycles. Continuous evidence collection makes this question easy to answer at any time.
"Can you trace this evidence back to when the decision was made?"
This question tests governance. The visiting team wants to know that curriculum decisions — adding a course, changing coverage levels, modifying a rubric — were made deliberately and documented. A curriculum map that changed between cycles without any record of who made the change and why raises questions about process integrity.
Programs that keep a decision log — even a simple one — paired with their curriculum map can answer this immediately. Programs that updated the map "sometime during the summer" cannot.
"Who is responsible for collecting and reviewing this evidence?"
This question tests accountability. The visiting team needs to know that evidence collection is not the sole burden of one person who may leave next year. If the coordinator is the only person who knows where the evidence lives, the team will note that as a risk.
We covered this risk in our post on surviving coordinator turnover. A shared evidence system — where faculty submit evidence into a centralized platform and the coordinator reviews it — distributes institutional knowledge across the program. The visiting team notices when programs have this structure, and they notice when they do not.
Evidence Gaps That Raise Red Flags
Visiting teams have reviewed hundreds of programs. They know what authentic evidence looks like, and they know what coordination desperation looks like. These are the gaps that trigger deeper scrutiny.
Evidence that cannot be produced on short notice
The visiting team will ask for documents during meetings, often with little warning. If the coordinator needs to email three faculty members and wait for attachments, the team will notice the delay. If the evidence is on a personal drive, in a shared folder that nobody can navigate, or worse — does not exist — the team will mark it as a gap.
The fix is organizational: every piece of evidence should be findable by the coordinator within two minutes of a request. A connected evidence map makes this trivial because the evidence is linked to the indicator it supports, not buried in a directory structure only the original uploader understands.
Assessment data that does not connect to actions taken
This is the most common gap. Programs collect assessment data every year. They file it somewhere. But six years later, when the visiting team asks what the program did with the 2022 assessment results showing weak performance on GA4 (design), the coordinator cannot produce a record of any action taken.
The gap is not the poor student performance. The gap is the missing response. The visiting team expects programs to close the loop. If you assessed and did nothing, document why. "No action was needed because results met the target" is a valid answer. No answer at all is a red flag.
Course syllabi that do not match the curriculum map
The curriculum map says MECH 340 provides Mastery-level coverage of GA3-Indicator 2. The syllabus says the course covers "design principles and communication skills." There is no mention of problem analysis. The visiting team will ask: which one is correct?
Map-evidence misalignment is a trust issue. If the map does not match the course, the team cannot trust what the map says about other courses either. We cover this in our post on curriculum review — keeping the map current and aligned with actual course content is an ongoing discipline, not a pre-visit scramble.
Missing documentation of continuous improvement cycles
The self-study narrative claims the program has a robust continuous improvement process. But the minutes from curriculum committee meetings show assessment data was discussed once in three years, and no action plans were documented.
The visiting team cross-references claims with records. If the narrative says one thing and the meeting minutes say another, the narrative loses credibility. The fix is to document the process as it happens — meeting minutes that reference assessment findings, action plans with deadlines, follow-up reports that measure the impact of changes.
How to Organize Your Evidence Before the Visit
The best preparation is not last-minute document gathering. It is building a structure that makes evidence findable, traceable, and defensible. Here is a practical approach.
Build an evidence inventory by Graduate Attribute and indicator
Start with the curriculum map. For each indicator at each coverage level (Introduction, Reinforcement, Mastery), list every course that addresses it and every piece of evidence connected to it. This is the structure the visiting team will use, so organize your evidence the same way.
This is exactly what a connected evidence map does. Instead of a spreadsheet with folder paths, you have a live map where every indicator links to its courses, every course links to its assessments, and every assessment links to student work samples and results. We explored this in our post on managing curriculum changes — keeping the map current between visits prevents the pre-visit scramble.
Validate evidence quality before the visit
Run through your evidence inventory with a critical eye. For each piece of evidence, ask:
- Is it current? (Not from a previous accreditation cycle.)
- Is it direct? (Does it actually measure the indicator it claims to support?)
- Is it specific? (Can the visiting team trace it to the assessment item, the rubric, and the student result?)
- Is it accessible? (Can you produce it within two minutes of a request?)
We covered this validation process in our post on the evidence review. A systematic verification pass catches gaps before the visiting team does.
Prepare a visiting team evidence binder
Even in a digital world, the visiting team appreciates a printed evidence summary. Not every document — that would be hundreds of pages. A structured summary:
- Section 1: Program specifications and curriculum map.
- Section 2: Graduate Attribute coverage summary — one page per attribute showing courses, coverage levels, and key evidence.
- Section 3: Continuous improvement summary — findings, actions, and outcomes from the current cycle.
- Section 4: Quick-reference index — page numbers or digital links for every document the team might request.
This binder does not replace the full evidence repository. It is a navigation tool that helps the visiting team find what they need quickly, which helps the coordinator look organized and in control.
What the Visiting Team Does With the Evidence They Find
Understanding what happens after the evidence is handed over helps coordinators prepare more strategically. The visiting team does not simply file documents and move on. They use evidence in three ways during the visit.
Verification
The team checks whether the self-study narrative matches the evidence. If the narrative claims strong coverage of GA6 (communication) and the evidence shows only indirect assessments with thin data, the team will note the discrepancy. Every claim in the narrative should be supportable by evidence the team can access.
Pattern recognition
Visiting teams look for patterns across evidence. If five different courses all show similar weaknesses on the same indicator — for example, students consistently scoring below target on problem formulation — the team will see this as a program-level issue, not a course-level one. They will ask how the program identified the pattern and what systemic action was taken.
Question generation
Evidence raises as many questions as it answers. A strong assessment result may prompt the question "what did the program do to achieve this?" A weak result may prompt "what is the plan to address this?" The best coordinators anticipate these questions and prepare responses before the visit.
Summary
Visiting teams ask for evidence in three categories: program documentation, course-level evidence, and continuous improvement records. The questions they ask — about traceability, action taken, governance, and accountability — reveal whether a program has done the work or is scrambling to look like it has.
The gaps that raise red flags are predictable: evidence that cannot be found, assessment data disconnected from action, syllabi that do not match the curriculum map, and undocumented continuous improvement cycles. Each of these gaps is preventable with an organized evidence structure maintained throughout the accreditation cycle, not assembled in the months before the visit.
A connected evidence map eliminates the guesswork. It links every indicator to its courses, every course to its assessments, and every assessment to student results — with continuous improvement records tied to the decisions they informed. The visiting team does not need to see a fancy platform. They need to see that you can produce the right evidence, quickly, and explain what it means.
MapOutcomes builds that connected evidence map for your program. Courses, indicators, assessments, and exemplars are linked in one place so every claim is supportable and every gap is visible before the visit. Book a demo to see how the evidence map works.