One of a series of papers resulting from a Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) project, this handbook describes procedures for documenting the learning students take with them from college. Introductory material on the FIPSE project and the learner outcomes approach to college evaluation is followed by a discussion of alternate assessment procedures, including testing, institutional records, and surveys. The next sections look at each of these evaluation methods in detail. The section on the direct assessment of learning through testing considers the use of tests developed locally by individual faculty members or faculty groups and externally developed tests; the development of short-essay test questions; common flaws to be avoided in test construction; the characteristics of effective short-essay questions; the aggregation of the results of multiple-choice questions; multiple-choice tests; and the development of multiple-choice questions. The section on the use of existing college records advocates the determination of patterns of course completion as a way of expanding information, and suggests steps to increase detail in inferences about student learning based on college records. The use of surveys to gather information on learning outcomes is discussed next, with particular emphasis on follow-up surveys and the construction of useful surveys. Finally, the uses of learner outcomes data are explored. Information on sampling theory is appended. (LAL)