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) 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.…

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…

As an online competency-based university, Western Governors University (WGU) requires that students demonstrate competence in given content areas through a series of assessments. WGU employs a number of assessment techniques, including objective assessments, performance assessments, portfolios, capstones, and observations. Unlike most academic…

Western Governors University (WGU) is an online competency-based university in which students demonstrate content competence through a series of assessments. Assessments most often are performance-based or objective assessments that are developed in accordance with specific content objectives. Objective assessments generally assess lower-level…

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…

Scores of colleges and universities have pledged to promote lifelong learning in their most central document, the mission statement. Moreover, "A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of Higher Education," the report from the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education (2006), stresses the importance of lifelong…

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 U.S. Military Academy (USMA) at West Point is responsible for developing in its graduates literacy in the sciences that renders them capable of solving complex real-world problems. Throughout their careers as officers in the military, graduates will be called upon to view the physical world in a disciplined and objective manner, with an…

The purpose of this article is to provide a snapshot of assessment practices for distance MBA programs in order to help readers gain a better understanding of this landscape. The authors present the findings of a study that they designed which consisted of a nineteen-item on-line questionnaire that surveyed distance MBA providers in regard to…

This article discusses the Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS) which celebrated twenty-five years of service, stewardship, and spirit in 2004. CAS is a consortium of thirty-five higher education associations whose directors achieve consensus on the nature and application of standards that guide the work of…

Most publications on outcomes assessment take a holistic approach: they focus more on the whole of assessment than on its components. They describe entire academic assessment programs and their cumulative impact on institutional effectiveness. Some evaluation articles characterize assessment components such as instruments, findings, and use of…

Student engagement measures make valuable contributions to an institution's assessment program. Combined with other relevant information, such data help to tie together what students and institutions do, student outcomes, and other indicators of institutional performance. The results can be used in a variety of ways, from comparing student…

For many colleges and universities, surveys constitute an important component of efforts to assess institutional effectiveness. Although the use of surveys in assessment is widespread, the National Center for Postsecondary Improvement (NCPI) report notes that examples of the use of survey results in academic decision making are relatively rare.…

When a college or university needs an assessment instrument, it has two choices: select an existing instrument or develop a new one. Since the cost of instrument development in both time and human resources is often prohibitive, many assessment programs rely on existing instruments. The challenge then becomes choosing one that provides the best…