This issue of "Assessment Update" presents the following articles: (1) Expanding Assessment Perspectives: The Importance of Student Leadership in Student Learning Outcomes Assessment (Abraham J. Lauer and Jamie R. Korin); (2) Empowering Faculty and Students with Assessment Data (Jane M. Souza); (3) Including Faculty in Accreditation…

This issue of "Assessment Update" presents the following articles: (1) Do Good Assessment Practices Measure Up to the Principles of Assessment?; (2) Healthy Assessment: What Nursing Schools Can Teach Us about Effective Assessment of Student Learning; (3) Development of a National Survey for Secondary Mathematics Teacher Education…

This issue of "Assessment Update" presents the following articles: (1) SLO-Based Grading Makes Assessment an Integral Part of Teaching (Nagy N. Bengiamin and Christina Leimer); (2) Editor's Notes: Assessing Assessment's ROI (Trudy W. Banta); (3) Assessment Plans: A Tool for Sanity (Shannon M. Sexton); and (4) Lessons from…

This issue of "Assessment Update" presents the following articles: (1) A "Wisdom of Crowds" Approach to Outcomes Assessment (Gregory Burton); (2) Editor's Notes: Collective Assessment and DQP Follow-Up (Trudy W. Banta); (3) Satisfaction with Data Management Systems in Standards-Based Alignment (Brett Everhart and Jeanne M.…

This issue of "Assessment Update" presents the following articles: (1) Accreditation and Assessment: The Root of My Teaching Metamorphosis (Barbara June Rodriguez); (2) Editor's Notes: Addressing a Question of Credibility (Trudy W. Banta); (3) Do We Practice What We Preach? The Accountability of an Assessment Office (Keston H.…

This issue of "Assessment Update" presents the following articles: (1) Mission Accomplished! The Development of a Competence-based E-portfolio Assessment Model (Shelley Schuurman, Scott Berlin, Jamie Langlois, and Julie Guevara); (2) The Third Rail of Assessment--Dangerous but Powerful (Dale L. Mort); (3) Video Killed the Radio…

At a recent assessment workshop, one of the authors' colleagues, Andrew Stuart Bergerson, offered a novel metaphor for building their university's assessment program. "We need to spread the assessment virus on campus," Drew remarked, half seriously. Although they had a good laugh over this image at the time, it encapsulates the faculty-driven…

Assessment practices at Sinclair Community College have evolved since the early 1980s to a highly sophisticated set of processes that begin with the collection, analysis, and documentation of general education and program outcomes data and result in course and program improvements. A continuing challenge has been the development of new full-time…

Every ecological, educational, or organizational system possesses a defining trait, one that affords competitive advantage. The Virginia system of higher education has consistently leaned on its institutional diversity to produce one of the most well-educated and productive bodies of learners in the nation. Given the national climate, a commitment…

The purpose of this article is to describe a procedure that has been used successfully to evaluate the critical thinking (CT) abilities of a population of undergraduates having limited proficiency in the English language. The results of this study demonstrate that it is possible to obtain reliable evaluations of CT skills in undergraduates who…

This article describes how St. Louis Community College has created a culture of action using mission-based assessment. By directly linking assessment processes to mission areas such as transfer education, the college has created a central, unifying theme for assessment. Because the mission is everyone's business, assessment in turn becomes…

Frederick Community College's assessment of student learning within student affairs has evolved as a result of the confluence of three transformative initiatives: (1) the institution's decision to shape itself into a learning college; (2) the revision of accreditation standards, placing increased emphasis on institutional assessment and assessment…

Many people know the myth of Sisyphus, the ancient king who committed an offense against the gods and was condemned for an eternity to roll a boulder unsuccessfully to the top of a steep hill. Each time he reached the summit, the boulder, of its own weight, would roll back to the bottom, whereupon Sisyphus would have to begin laboriously rolling…

The author is an outgoing faculty chair of the college assessment committee (CAC) at Moravian College. In this article, he shares the learned principles and constructive practices that guided his ten years of successful progress in fostering assessment: (1) Assessment must be part of the strategic plan; (2) Assessment language must be consistently…

The college president's role in supporting and promoting student learning outcomes and institutional assessment is a herculean one. At Guam Community College (GCC), the president has been performing a crucial role in setting an assessment example for the rest of the college community since he took office on June 16, 2001. Seeking to model an…