Assessment of Learning in Higher Education (ALHE) has, since its roots in the early 1980s, grown into a routine activity in higher education institutions in the United States that is led by thousands of professionals who contribute to a growing body of scholarship. Yet, there are few formal ALHE training programs, no licensure or certification for…

What skills and dispositions are most important for higher education assessment professionals to be successful in their work? Emerging professionals and their instructors must be cognizant of what skills and dispositions are necessary in order to be adequately prepared for this work. Utilizing a survey instrument that was developed based on recent…

Assessment takes place throughout the collegiate context involving a range of diverse individuals and they need to be valued, appreciated, and respected for their unique individual, disciplinary, and professional contributions to assessment. Those working in assessment are encouraged to consider adopting collaborative, shared approaches to leading…

Assessment practitioners in higher education follow a variety of paths to their roles. Diverse preparation supports creative problem-solving in a changing educational landscape. However, it can also lead to inconsistency in language, preparation, and background knowledge. Further, the chasms between assessment practitioners' paths can lead to…

Meta-assessment is a useful strategy to document assessment practices and guide efforts to improve the culture of assessment at an institution. In this study, a meta-assessment of undergraduate and graduate academic program assessment reports evaluated the maturity of assessment work. Assessment reports submitted in the first year (75…

The intersection in 2020 of the new COVID-19 pandemic with the ongoing pandemic of anti-black racism exacerbated existing injustices as well as caused and revealed new inequities in US higher education. Because inequities in assessment in particular were intensified by these twin pandemics, faculty at several US colleges revised assessment…

Professional standards related to outcomes assessment call for student affairs professionals to use research to inform programming. If professionals are to rely on research to build programs that positively impact student learning outcomes, the research should be credible. We examined the quality of program effectiveness research available for…

When engaging in outcomes assessment, higher education professionals (i.e., faculty, student affairs educators) are expected to gather reliable data and make valid inferences. Decisions about how to measure student learning and development outcomes impact inferences about the achievement of outcomes and determination of improvement efforts.…

This paper examines students' patterns of success in classes with high DFW rates at a research-intensive university. We investigated whether certain assignment types were associated with inequitable grade distributions for underrepresented minority (URM) and transfer students and whether assignment grade patterns were similar to final grade…

Kolb's experiential learning cycle theorizes the process of learning through a hands-on experience. Although the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education (VALUE) rubrics provide a direct measure of the qualities of this learning cycle, few indirect measures have been…

In an effort to create a meaningful but reduced set of institutional core competencies, the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) Core Competency Project was developed. This paper reviews the importance of core competencies as a unifying institutional tool to examine equitable outcomes for all learners across schools and programs and to…

Identifying evidence-informed programming (e.g., strategies, activities, pedagogies) facilitates both the intentional offering of programming that should "work" and the use of the outcomes assessment process to evaluate program effectiveness. Evidence-informed programming is more efficient than unsupported programming because the…

A Faculty Encouragement Scale (FES) was created to measure students' perception of faculty encouragement (challenge-focused and potential-focused encouragement) in college. This paper reports the psychometric properties of scores from the FES using a sample of 237 first-year engineering undergraduate students in a suburban public university.…

Prior research suggests that Academic Program Review (APR) is most effective when it is a systematic process that supports program improvement. One potential way to increase faculty involvement in comprehensive APR processes is by engaging faculty members as internal peer reviewers (IPRs). This qualitative study investigated faculty members'…

In an age of increased focus on improving the student learning experience and engaging in quality improvement processes within academic programs, higher education institutions need to clearly articulate expectations and criteria for the assessment of students' learning to support academic programs in achieving their goals. Given the need for a…