WKU Experience Partner Resources | Western Kentucky University

The WKU Experience

The WKU Experience is our unified, institution-wide commitment to supporting student growth both inside and outside the classroom. This framework empowers students to develop transferable, career-ready skills by connecting high impact learning, campus engagement, and professional development into one intentional journey.

The WKU Experience organizes co-curricular engagement through three core dashboards—Toppers Climb, Topper Life, and Toppers R.I.S.E.—each aligned with valuable areas of development. Rooted in the university’s mission and values, this framework helps students cultivate meaningful learning and transferable skills.

Through the Suitable platform, students track and reflect on their engagement across all areas of their WKU journey, building evidence of their development in real time. The academic transcript captures progress toward earning a diploma. The Suitable Scorecard captures the development of durable skills and hands-on experience through co-curricular engagement. Together, they provide a robust picture of student growth and attainment.

The WKU Experience fosters:

Holistic Learning by bridging academic excellence with campus involvement and career exploration.
Student-Centered Growth by promoting reflection, self-awareness, and real-world applications.
Engaged Citizenship by encouraging contributions to communities with integrity and purpose.
Lifelong Learning by equipping students to adapt, lead, and thrive well beyond graduation.

The WKU Experience helps students become more than just graduates—it develops Hilltoppers who lead, reflect, and make a lasting difference.

The WKU Experience Pillars and Competencies

The WKU Experience is supported by three pillars- Suitable dashboards. Each dashboard has carefully selected competencies to support its respective goals for student development.

Your professional climb starts here—build knowledge, sharpen skills, and rise to the top.

Toppers Climb focuses on tracking students’ professional development through engagement with co-curricular resources and programming. Students build knowledge and sharpen skills essential for lifelong learning.

This dashboard includes activities presented by academic departments and programs, Mahurin Honors College, Academic Advising, Career Development, and many more programs and units.

Competencies

Collaboration & Communication Engages meaningfully with others through active listening, respectful dialogue, and shared responsibility to achieve academic, personal, or professional goals. Builds inclusive relationships that support peer learning, problem-solving, and exposure to diverse perspectives.

Critical Thinking & Innovation Applies analytical thinking, creative expression, and informed judgment to explore complex issues and generate original ideas. Engages in innovation across disciplines—including the arts, sciences, media, and technology—to solve problems and express new perspectives.

Professionalism & Career Readiness Demonstrates ethical behavior, reliability, and a strong work ethic. Takes initiative and manages time, priorities, and responsibilities effectively while developing the professional competencies needed for success in academic, workplace, and community settings.

Leadership & Civic Engagement Demonstrates initiative, ethical leadership, and a commitment to community building, cultural awareness, and positive change through service, advocacy, or engagement with campus and local needs.

Wellness & Resilience Practices self-awareness and strategies that support well-being, balance, and perseverance—and foster a sense of belonging—through academic challenges. Draws on WKU’s 10 Dimensions of Wellness to promote holistic development.

Academic Engagement Actively participates in academic and applied learning experiences—within and beyond the classroom—to deepen curiosity, develop practical and discipline-specific skills, and connect learning to real-world contexts.

Discover who you are, find where you belong, and connect to the spirit of WKU.

Topper Life captures student engagement in identity development, leadership, and building community. This dashboard reflects growth in self-awareness, collaboration, and inclusive excellence.

This dashboard includes Student Activities, Student Organizations, Housing & Residence Life, TRIO Programs, Campus Recreation & Wellness, Counseling Center, Student Financial Assistance, and more.

Competencies

Self-Awareness & Identity Development: Demonstrates an understanding of personal identity and values; engages in reflective practices and is self-aware enough to recognize needs and seek support when necessary. Builds positive relationships with others as part of ongoing personal growth and contributes to a sense of belonging within the campus environment.

Wellbeing & Resilience: Prioritizes physical, mental, and emotional health; engages in proactive self-care strategies; and demonstrates perseverance, adaptability, and a positive mindset when navigating personal or academic challenges.

Civic & Social Responsibility: Actively participates in efforts that promote ethical values, strengthen connections with others, and contribute to a welcoming, respectful, and supportive campus environment. Demonstrates a commitment to personal responsibility and positive engagement in the broader campus setting.

Leadership, Teamwork & Community Engagement: Actively engages in campus life by collaborating with others and taking initiative to create positive impact. Demonstrates a commitment to shared goals, builds supportive relationships, and fosters a sense of connection and belonging within the campus environment.

Cultural Awareness & Interpersonal Communication: Demonstrates respectful and effective communication with individuals from a variety of backgrounds and experiences. Seeks to understand different perspectives, adapts communication styles as needed, and fosters meaningful connections that support mutual understanding and a positive campus environment.

Rise on your path to career readiness, leadership, and lifelong impact.

Watch here for more information as this dashboard is developed.

Presenting the WKU Experience in Suitable

Suitable is WKU's co-curricular engagement platform. This application is is a powerful tool for promoting activities, tracking engagement, and generating useful data. It will allow faculty to integrate co-curricular learning into courses more easily; allow staff and advisors to track student engagement, support mentoring and coaching, and evaluate programming impact; and allow administrators to access data for strategic planning and institutional effectiveness.

Activities are events or tasks that students may complete in various ways:

Events are completed by scanning a QR Code that is automatically generated by Suitable
Tasks can be completed by:
- Submitting a Reflection (short paragraph)
- Submitting a File (most file formats, including images, videos, text, spreadsheets, and more)
- Completing a Survey or other Form Response

The validity of student Activity completions is the responsibility of the activity owner- a WKU employee or program. Activity owners may require approval before points for completing an Activity can be earned. Students can see Activities with pending approval in their Activities tab.

Activity completion data is available real-time to anyone with any level of administrative access to Suitable, and will automatically be reflected in Blackboard gradebooks where the activity has been added.

(Note: Activities may be "adopted" from one dashboard to another, but most Activities will appear only in one dashboard. You may need to switch to another dashboard to find an Activity. See more about dashboards, above.)

Activities in Suitable have higher visibility. Students can easily see activities that are "Upcoming" or "Recently Added." They can also use the powerful keyword search, any of the filters listed, or combine filters and the keyword search to quickly identify the activities that hold the most value for them.

Keyword Search primarily depends upon the name of the activity and can include:
- The "owner" of the Activity: Kentucky Museum, ACDC, F1rstGen, and so on
- Activities intended for specific groups of students will indicate this in the name:
  - Juniors, Seniors, Campus, and many other options
  - Cohort or Program (TRIO SSS, Ogden Sciences LLC, Military Student Support, and so on)
- An indication of the Activity's content, such as "visit," "speaker," "show," and so on.
Competencies are designated for every activity. Students searching for Activities to develop their Leadership or Wellness can use Competencies to filter for those Activities.
Types are definted by Suitable. This filter can be used to search for Events, Tasks, or Sets of Activities.
Levels:
- Level 1 - 10 Points - Exposure and Introductory activities that require attendance or limited time commitment to complete. The majority of activities will be at this level.
- Level 2 - 20 Points - Contribution and Engagement activities that require some effort through thoughtful participation, critical thinking, or responsibility to complete.
- Level 3 - 50 Points - Dedication and Commitment activities that require a moderate amount of time, attention, and effort. Completion may require repeated effort over time.
- Level 4 - 75 Points - Expertise and Mastery activities include high-impact actions that create lasting experiences. These will require that students draw on previously learned skills and abilities and will require extended time commitments over a semester or year to complete.
Experience Tags vary for each dashboard and may include:
- Academic College or other Unit
- Format (Face to Face, On Your Own, etc.)
- Location
- Student Characteristics (high school/dual credit, for example)
- Student Cohort (TRIO SSS, LLC, etc.)

Achievements are also referred to as badges. Badges are carefully selected groups of activities curated by different programs and units across campus. Not all students will see all badges, so selecting activities included in badges is a great way to ensure students are completing activities that are of most value for them.

What Suitable Is—and Isn’t

Suitable is designed to enhance WKU’s co-curricular experience by capturing meaningful student engagement outside the classroom. It does not include academic records such as transcript grades, GPA, or other FERPA-protected data—ensuring a clear focus on personal, professional, and leadership development and the flexibility to allow more open access.

Rather than replacing systems like Blackboard, InfoView, or TopNet, Suitable works alongside them to provide a more complete picture of student involvement. Its purpose is to streamline and centralize the tracking of co-curricular activities, replacing the many spreadsheets and manual methods used in the past.

Suitable excels at managing event-based participation and task completion through its core “complete/incomplete” activity status. While other platforms may be better suited for some types of incremental tracking over time, the integrated Forms, similar to Microsoft Forms, offer an option for tracking service hours or attendance over time that may be useful to you.

To maintain clarity and accountability, events and tasks should only be created by the unit or program that presents them. This ensures accurate ownership, improves discoverability, and supports collaboration across departments. Any activity can be included in Sets and Badges created by other units, and completion data is accessible to all users with administrative access.

Registered Student Organizations (RSOs) have access to Suitable in Toppers Life, allowing them to create activities, track membership, and manage engagement independently.

Activity owners are expected to review and maintain their activities weekly while they are live to ensure students have a smooth and accurate experience.

Suitable provides robust reporting tools, in the form of Excel-based reports on activity completions, badge progress, and engagement by student tags or characteristics.

Finally, Scorecards and Portfolios are visible to students and all Suitable administrators, offering a transparent and holistic view of each student’s WKU Experience.

Terminology

Achievement, also called a “Badge” -This is a curated grouping of Activities (including Experience Sets). Students who complete an Achievement will have this accomplishment added to their Suitable Scorecard and will be able to share it on LinkedIn. We anticipate that many programs on campus will “own” an Achievement in which they present their selected Activities to students. Admins can select a specified list of students to see their Achievements, as desired.

Activity – Think of these as the basic building blocks in Suitable. They are an event or task. Students may complete an Activity by scanning a QR code, submitting a file, writing a short reflection, or submitting a Form response. The Activity owner may choose to require approval for completion. Activities will have an “owner” responsible for any needed approvals, giving credit to students outside of the regular Completion options, and general editing and maintenance of the Activity. Any Activity, regardless of ownership, may be included in any Experience Set or Achievement.

Activity Tag or Experience Tag – These tags include a variety of characteristics that allow the full list of Activities to be filtered for easier searching. Examples of tags include identifiers for segmented student groups (Honors, LLC, etc.), in-person/remote, scheduled/on your own, and so on. Activities may also be sorted by: Upcoming, Recently Added, and My Created.

Admin (Suitable administrator) – Suitable allows for four different admin levels: Global Admin, Publisher, Advisor, and Contributor. The number of Global Admins will be limited. Publishers will generally be individuals who own one or more Achievements. Advisors and Contributors may own Activities. All levels can view Achievements, view Student Scorecard and Portfolio information, retrieve event QR codes, view Activity completions, and pull Activity completion reports.

Blackboard integration – Activities created in Suitable are available for instructors to add to their course (or Organization) in Blackboard Ultra. Student Activity completions will automatically be recorded in the gradebook as a pass/fail or 0/full points (no partial points). Activities can be added through the Content Market; Suitable access is not needed.

Co-curricular transcript – A student may download this PDF summary of their co-curricular engagement at any time. The document will have WKU branding and standardized content drawn from the student Scorecard and Portfolio. This will be entirely separate from the student’s academic transcript and is intended to capture items not captured by the academic transcript.

Dashboard – Our instance of Suitable has three Dashboards. Each of these supports major elements of our WKU Experience. The three are: Topper Life, Toppers Climb, and Toppers RISE. Topper Life will broadly match the goals of our Student Experience division to welcome students to the WKU community and enable them to be healthy, engaged, and productive. Toppers Climb will include co-curricular activities that help students grow as professionals, cultivate skills and networks to help them succeed, and prepare for the future. Toppers RISE is dedicated to our QEP and will enable better implementation and reporting.

Experience Set – An Experience Set allows Activities to be grouped together and allows Activities to be designated as Required or Optional for Completion. Experience Sets may include other Experience Sets. Experience Sets may be included in Achievements. Experience Sets are an important tool in laying out a pathway of Activities for your students that matches your program goals.

Forms – Suitable Forms brings an extra level of functionality. The intention is to eliminate the need to use multiple applications. Suitable Forms are integrated into the system to enable more automation and less manual tracking.

Handshake integration – This integration will draw Handshake events into Suitable so that they are included in the students’ Scorecard and Portfolio. It also automates sharing Completions (such as attendance at career fairs) from Handshake to Suitable (and to Blackboard gradebooks).

Portfolio – The Suitable Portfolio is the repository for any files uploaded into Suitable as students complete Activities. Students may also upload additional files manually. The files are viewable by Suitable admins and students. Students may also share their Portfolio with potential employers and others by providing a link generated by Suitable. They may “show” or “hide” individual items in the Portfolio, as desired. Students may access their Suitable account and view/share their Portfolio as long as they have their Toppermail email account.

RSVP – This added feature will allow event owners to assign a maximum number of attendees for events and monitor which students intend to participate. Students may see their list of RSVPs to help them manage their schedule. An RSVP does not reflect Completion. The student will still need to complete the Activity.

Scorecard – The student Scorecard includes information about progress on Achievements, engagement with competency development, and other details collected by Suitable over time. The Scorecard is available to view by Suitable admins and the student.

Student Tag – The feed of data from Banner to Suitable will update student information each night. This includes details such as college, major, classification, and much more. This data can be used to segment students for Notifications, access to Achievements, reporting, and more. For smaller groups of students, we can manually create Tags within Suitable; however, these will require manual maintenance to keep the information up-to-date.

Suitable – This is an application designed to capture student engagement and make that information available to students and WKU faculty, staff, and administration through one system. This means not needing separate Microsoft Forms or Qualtrics or paper sign-in sheets for every event, no more asking for attendance lists or manually entering Excel data in your Blackboard gradebook, and having a way to automatically compile student participation and achievements for your reference and theirs! General information available at https://www.suitable.co/

Register for Information and Training Sessions

Onboarding sessions are available in the WKU Professional Development Registration system. Read the session descriptions, below, then use the link to register. Special and customized sessions are available for groups and may be requested using the contact information at the bottom of this page.

Note: Faculty who wish to add a Suitable activity to their Blackboard course content and gradebook do NOT need administrative access to Suitable to do so. Click on Faculty in the black bar, above, for more information and step-by-step instructions. If you prefer a live run-through of the process, you may wish to attend the Integration session listed below.

Sessions include:

Overview of the WKU Experience and Suitable

Suitable is an application for tracking student co-curricular engagement.  It has been used by some units on campus for five years.  This fall, it is available across campus and has A LOT of new functionality. This session includes general information about the goals of campus-wide implementation, a tour of Suitable, and a conversation about the possibilities.  This session is ideal for people who would like to know more, but do not wish to have access, yet. Duration: 45 minutes

Getting Started as a Suitable Partner

This session is for anyone who is NEW to Suitable or who has completed onboarding for Advisor-level access and would like a refresher.  Participants will learn technical skills, including how to navigate, how to create/request activities, and how to run reports.  We will also cover the framework of shared practices that will help you quickly get started, avoid pitfalls, and present a consistent and valuable experience for students. Participants will be set up for Advisor-level access following the session. Duration: 1 ½ hours

Finding Student Information in Suitable

The content of this session is a portion of the content covered in “Getting Started as a Suitable Partner.” This is a shorter session for those who support students but will not create or maintain activities. Participants will learn how to look up individual students and groups of students, view the scorecard and portfolio, view activity completions, and generate reports. Participants will be set up for Advisor-level access following the session. Duration: 45 minutes

Suitable Access Level Upgrade

This session is for anyone who has completed Getting Started/Advisor-level onboarding and would like to upgrade to Publisher-level access, OR anyone who previously completed Publisher-level onboarding and would like a refresher. This includes people who used Suitable pre-transition and need to become familiar with our new shared practices. Duration: 45 minutes       Note: Publisher-level access is appropriate and useful for those who must maintain activities created by others, who will maintain an Achievement(badge), and who are responsible for providing support to others in their unit/program. Undergraduate student workers are not eligible for Publisher-level access.

Suitable Touchbase

Join this informal session if you have already completed onboarding and would like to ask specific questions, get advice, or get a general update on the implementation of new features.  This session does not have set content. Learn together and build ties with other partners.  Duration: 30 minutes with additional time available

About Suitable Forms

Students can complete Suitable activities through various methods, including QR code scans, reflections, file uploads, or submitting responses via the integrated Suitable Forms. Forms may include a range of question types such as multiple choice, text responses, rankings, date/time inputs, and more. This session offers a deeper look into the integrated Forms functionality within Suitable. It covers how to set up a Form, the types of questions you can include, and how to access and interpret responses in reports. This session is ideal for participants who have already completed at least one Suitable onboarding session and are familiar with its core features, navigation, and terminology. Duration: 45 minutes

Using the Blackboard-Suitable Integration

While Suitable does not replace Blackboard or its assignments, it does allow you to add co-curricular events and tasks to your Blackboard course or organization in just a few steps. You can decide the points/grade for your gradebook, and the completion data will automatically feed across from Suitable- no more paper signup sheets or manual entry. Note: Suitable access and this session are NOT required to use this functionality. Instructions are available any time upon request. This session is ideal for those who prefer live training, have questions about details of the integration, or would like additional assistance. Duration: 30 minutes

These additional sessions are planned for the future:

Achievement/Badge Creation Process

Reporting Tips