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) Through the Rearview Looking Glass: Collaborative Writing and the Accreditation Self-Study; (2) Editor's Notes: Another Glimpse of Evaluation in China; (3) Assessment Is Not a Spectator Sport: Experiencing Authentic Assessment in the Classroom; (4) Faculty…

This issue of "Assessment Update" presents the following articles: (1) "Just Right" Outcomes Assessment: A Fable for Higher Education (Catherine M. Wehlburg); (2) Editor's Notes: Helping Faculty Members Learn (Linda Suskie); (3) Focus on the Bottom-Line: Assessing Business Writing (Michael Cherry and George Klemic); (4)…

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) Closing the Loop: How an Assessment Project Paved the Way for GE Reform (Joan Hawthorne and Anne Kelsch); (2) Value-Added? Committing to Quality: Guidelines for Assessment and Accountability in Higher Education (David C. Paris); (3) Creating a Cadre of Assessment…

Griffith, Day, Scott, and Smallwood (1996) state, "Planning cannot survive without a budget, [and] neither planning nor budgeting can survive with integrity without assessment." If the integrity of planning and budgeting processes is affected by assessment, then this author argues that there are effective ways in which assessment can be integrated…

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…

This article focuses on the assessment system at Western Governors University from the perspective of candidate assessment and performance and on the way in which this system is presented to the Board of Examiners of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE). Central to a successful review by the NCATE Board of Examiners…

Graduate education is an increasingly diverse segment of higher education. The master's degree is replacing the baccalaureate as the new standard for adult learners, and professional doctorates all signal an expanding domain. Graduate programs are not exempt from requirements for assessment of outcomes, yet standards and best practices for…

During the past two decades, colleges and universities have used best practices from corporate management such as total quality management, strategic planning, management by objectives, benchmarking, data warehousing, and performance indicators. Many institutions of higher learning now have adopted comprehensive and multifaceted approaches to…

Outcomes assessment often becomes a focus of attention as a response to accreditation requirements. But if the emphasis is short-term, it can produce crisis-mode frustrations that will be repeated each time accreditation rolls around. Increasingly, accreditation agencies are asking for evidence that program-level assessment is ongoing. This…

Why is the implementation of learning outcomes assessment in higher education proceeding so grudgingly? When assessment results are obtained, why are they so rarely integrated into the strategic planning process? These questions remain prominent in spite of over a decade of intensive effort on the part of educational accrediting agencies to…

The role of accreditation in the United States is facing increased scrutiny, due in part to the impending renewal of the Higher Education Act and to the report of the U.S. Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education. The report claims that a "transformation of accreditation" toward an exclusively outcomes-focused system…

In the current climate of emphasis on outcomes assessment, colleges and universities are working diligently to create assessment processes for student learning outcomes, competence in general education, student satisfaction with services, and electronic tracking media to document evidence of competence in graduates. Benchmarking has become a…