The objective of this work is to suggest a process for improving the assessment of educational outcomes in universities. Improved accountability and assessment has become an important direction in academic institutional research, but the underlying question--how best to accomplish this goal is an open question. A framework is first described which promotes the categorization of academic assessment. Based on this framework, a preliminary instrument was developed and piloted. The results of this study are reported and plans for future efforts are described. (Contains 1 figure and 7 tables.)