Books available through the Office of Assessment and Educational Effectiveness

Assessment of Chemistry; Ryan, Clark, and Collier

This volume has two primary motives: to enhance students' learning and success in chemistry and to share helpful insights and lessons with other chemistry faculty. The book provides detailed presentations and case studies that can be adapted for use in a variety of contexts.

Assessment of Writing; Paretti and Powell

Addresses the changing times in writing across the curriculum (WAC) and the extensive use of electronic portfolios to assist with these efforts. The book points to increased collaboration among scholars from multiple disciplines as a common feature of the current philosophy in writing assessment.

Assessment of Student Learning in Business Schools: Best Practices Each Step of the Way; Martell and Calderon

Issue 1 of 2. These works examine assessment methods in business disciplines and contain dozens of examples of learning objectives, methods, rubrics, and report templates.

Issue 2 of 2. These works examine assessment methods in business disciplines and contain dozens of examples of learning objectives, methods, rubrics, and report templates.

Assessment of Student Learning in College Mathematics: Towards Improved Programs and Courses; Madison

This work offers ten remarkably descriptive case studies in relation to assessing student learning in mathematics at nine U.S. universities.

Assessment in Engineering Programs: Evolving Best Practices; Kelly

This volume presents examples of sound assessment work achieved by combining national perspectives, program-level assessment plans, and practical advice for engineering faculty charged with measuring learning and skill development in the classroom.

Handbook of Practical Program Evaluation; Wholey, Hatry, and Newcomer

Praise for the third edition of the Handbook of Practical Program Evaluation

"Mix three of the most highly regarded evaluators with a team of talented contributors, and you end up with an exceedingly practical and useful handbook that belongs on the reference shelf of every evaluator as well as program and policy officials." —Jonathan D. Breul, executive director, IBM Center for The Business of Government

"Joe Wholey and his colleagues have done it again—a remarkably comprehensive, thoughtful, and interesting guide to the evaluation process and its context that should be useful to sponsors, users, and practitioners alike." —Eleanor Chelimsky, former U.S. Assistant Comptroller General for Program Evaluation and Methodology

"Students and practitioners of public policy and administration are fortunate that the leading scholars on evaluation have updated their outstanding book. This third edition of the Handbook of Practical Program Evaluation will prove once again to be an invaluable resource in the classroom and on the front lines for a public service under increasing pressure to do more with less."—Paul L. Posner, director, public administration, George Mason University, and immediate former president, the American Society of Public Administration

"The third edition of the Handbook of Practical Program Evaluation reflects the evolving nature of the field, while maintaining its value as a guide to the foundational skills needed for evaluation." —Leslie J. Cooksy, current president, the American Evaluation Association

Evaluation: A Systematic Approach (7^th Edition); Rossi, Lispey, and Freeman

With decades of hands-on experience conducting evaluations, the authors provide scores of examples to help students understand how evaluators deal with various critical issues. They include a glossary of key terms and concepts, making this the most comprehensive and authoritative evaluation text available.

Thoroughly revised, the Seventh Edition now includes

* Substantially more attention to outcome measurement

* Lengthy discussions of program theory, including a section about detecting program effects and interpreting their practical significance

* An augmented and updated discussion of major evaluation designs

* A detailed exposition of meta-analysis as an approach to the synthesis of evaluation studies

* Alternative approaches to evaluation

* Examples of successful evaluations

* Discussions of the political and social contexts of evaluation

Assessment in Practice: Putting Principles to Work on College Campuses; Banta, Lund, Black, and Oblander

Brings together in one volume the best current knowledge of what assessment methods work best and how their principles should be incorporated into all effective assessment efforts, whether at institutional, program, or department levels. Drawing from 165 actual cases, and reporting 86 of them in their entirety, the authors illustrate methods and techniques of assessment covering a wide range of objectives in diverse types of institutions.

Meaningful Course Revision: Enhancing Academic Engagement Using Student Learning Data; Wehlburg

Faculty are often motivated to change the activities and design of their courses for reasons not based on data. In Meaningful Course Revision, the author seeks instead to illustrate how the appropriate use of multiple, direct measures of student-learning outcomes can lead to enhanced course development and revision. While providing an outline of methods for creating significant learning experiences, the book also includes practical suggestions for shaping the design of a course to meet student needs.

Meaningful Course Revision urges a rethinking of teaching and learning. By making student advancement its focal point, it offers guidance through

• Data-based decision making
• Designing course-based assessment activities
• Using data to enhance innovation in course redesign
• Rethinking teaching and learning
• Embedding assessment activities in meaningful ways
• Planning the course
• Closing the feedback loop
• Moving from course-level decision making to departmental curriculum planning
• Creating a culture of student-learning outcomes assessment

Written for faculty seeking advice on how to keep their teaching interesting and effective,Meaningful Course Revision is a practical guide for collecting information about how well students are reaching course goals, learning what impact course changes are having on student learning, and putting courses into a cycle of continual revision and improvement.

Effective Grading: A Tool for Learning and Assessment in College; Walvoord and Anderson

This new edition of the classic book has been thoroughly updated and revised with the latest research. The book offers a hands-on guide for evaluating student work and examines the link between teaching and grading. The authors show how to integrate the grading process with course objectives and offer a wealth of information about student learning. The book also includes information on integration of technology and online teaching, and is filled with more illustrative examples, including a sample syllabus. This revised resource can help any professor enrich student learning in the classroom.

Engaging Large Classes: Strategies and Techniques for College Faculty; Stanley and Porter

Large classes have become a fact of life in colleges and universities across America; even as academic funding has decreased, class enrollments have continued to rise. Although students, teachers, and administrators are often concerned by the potentially negative impact of uneven teacher-to-student ratios, large classes also offer many potential advantages that are less recognized and not always maximized.

In Engaging Large Classes, the authors demonstrate that large classes can be just as stimulating and rewarding as smaller classes. Written by experienced teachers of large classes across a wide range of disciplines and institutions, this book provides faculty members and administrators with instructional strategies and advice on how to enhance large class settings.

This book summarizes many of the core issues related to successfully teaching large classes, including

• An honest review of the advantages and disadvantages of large classes
• Advice on how to design, plan, manage, and fairly assess large classes
• The universality of large-class issues across disciplines, from classroom management to working with teaching assistants
• Strategies for using classroom technology, active learning, and collaborative learning
• Seventeen detailed examples of large classes from a range of higher education institutions

The authors not only present an overview of research on teaching large classes, they also equip readers with helpful insight into the mechanics of large-class pedagogy. This book has the potential to change the way academia views the reality of teaching large classes.

The Course Syllabus: A Learning Centered Approach; O’Brien, Millis, and Cohen

When it was first published in 1997, The Course Syllabus became the gold standard reference for both new and experienced college faculty. Like the first edition, this book is based on a learner-centered approach. Because faculty members are now deeply committed to engaging students in learning, the syllabus has evolved into a useful, if lengthy, document. Today's syllabus provides details about course objectives, requirements and expectations, and also includes information about teaching philosophies, specific activities and the rationale for their use, and tools essential to student success.

Beyond Tests and Quizzes: Creative Assessments in the College Classroom; Mezeske and Mezeske

Because the drive toward external assessment speaks almost exclusively in terms of standardized testing, we need to be reminded of the internal purposes of assessment: measuring learning for both student and teacher so that instruction can be adjusted and improved. This book is written for college instructors who are striving to creatively change assessment practice to better reflect learner-centered teaching. It is intended to consider not only the multiple ways in which individuals learn content, but also the multiple avenues to assessment the variety of learning styles demands.

Creative assessment is defined here as assessments that spin, twist, and reform what might be a standard kind of assessment in an ordinary classroom. Instructors should use these examples of creative assessment as starting points, and as the beginnings of an internal discussion on what matters most in the courses they teach: What components of each course count the most for solving a range of problems in the discipline? If facts are important, and they usually are, how can they be used to support a flexible approach to thinking, solving, considering options, and gathering and interpreting evidence? What are the facts not telling us?

Assessing and Improving Your Teaching: Strategies and Rubrics for Faculty Growth and Student Learning; Blumberg

This practical evidence-based guide promotes excellence in teaching and improved student learning through self-reflection and self-assessment of one’s teaching. Phyllis Blumberg starts by reviewing the current approaches to instructor evaluation and describes their inadequacies. She then presents a new model of assessing teaching that builds upon a broader base of evidence and sources of support. This new model leads to self-assessment rubrics, which are available for download, and the book will guide you in how to use them. The book includes case studies of completed critical reflection rubrics from a variety of disciplines, including the performing and visual arts and the hard sciences, to show how they can be used in different ways and how to explore the richness of the data you’ll uncover.

Student Engagement Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty; Barkley

Keeping students involved, motivated, and actively learning is challenging educators across the country, yet good advice on how to accomplish this has not been readily available. Student Engagement Techniques is a comprehensive resource that offers college teachers a dynamic model for engaging students and includes over one hundred tips, strategies, and techniques that have been proven to help teachers from a wide variety of disciplines and institutions motivate and connect with their students. The ready-to-use format shows how to apply each of the book's techniques in the classroom and includes purpose, preparation, procedures, examples, online implementation, variations and extensions, observations and advice, and key resources.

The Learning Portfolio: Reflective Practice for Improving Student Learning; Zubizarreta

The learning portfolio is a powerful complement to traditional measures of student achievement and a widely diverse method of recording intellectual growth. This second edition of this important book offers new samples of print and electronic learning portfolios. An academic understanding of and rationale for learning portfolios and practical information that can be customized. Offers a review of the value of reflective practice in student learning and how learning portfolios support assessment and collaboration. Includes revised sample assignment sheets, guidelines, criteria, evaluation rubrics, and other material for developing print and electronic portfolios.

Documenting Learning with ePortfolios: A Guide for College Instructors; Light, Chen, & Ittleson

E-portfolios perform many functions in higher education at both an institutional and student level. This book offers online instructors guidance in creating and implementing e-portfolios with their students. It helps them assess the needs of their students then design and implement a strategic, comprehensive e-portfolio program tailored to these needs. Further, it lets instructors see how such programs can be used as an example of their own personal and professional academic development. This is an essential resource for any online instructor or student wishing to use e-portfolios as a tool.

Electronic Portfolios and Student Success: Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Learning; Chen and Light

This publication presents an overview of electronic portfolios and ways individuals and campuses can implement e-portfolios to enhance and assess student learning, recognizing that learning occurs in many places, takes many forms, and is exhibited through many modes of representation. It is organized around eight issues central to implementing an e-portfolio approach: defining learning outcomes; understanding your learners; identifying stakeholders; designing learning activities; including multiple forms of evidence; using rubrics to evaluate e-portfolios; anticipating external uses of evidence; and evaluating the impact of e-portfolios. This work is illustrated through multiple campus case study examples.

Electronic Portfolios 2.0: Emergent Research on Implementation and Impact; Cambridge, Cambridge, & Yancey

This book features emergent results of studies from 20 institutions that have examined effects on student reflection, integrative learning, establishing identity, organizational learning, and designs for learning supported by technology. It also describes how institutions have responded to multiple challenges in eportfolio development, from engaging faculty to going to scale.

These studies exemplify how eportfolios can spark disciplinary identity, increase retention, address accountability, improve writing, and contribute to accreditation. The chapters demonstrate the applications of eportfolios at community colleges, small private colleges, comprehensive universities, research universities, and a state system.

Eportfolios for Lifelong Learning and Assessment; Cambridge

This book clearly articulates the foundations of an educational vision that is distinctively supported by eportfolio use, drawing on work in philosophy, sociology, higher and adult education, and elearning research. It is academically rigorous and accessible not only to scholars in a range of disciplines who might study or use eportfolios. It surveys the state-of-the-art of international eportfolio practice and suggests future directions for higher educational institutions in terms of curriculum, assessment, and technology. This resource is written for scholars, support staff, instructional technologists, academic administrators, and policy makers.

peerReview: E-Portfolios for Reflection, Learning, and Assessment; Association of American Colleges and Universities

E-portfolios are now being used in more than half of US colleges and universities. This issue provides examples of how engaging with e-portfolios enhances student learning and can be used for assessment and students' professional preparation and job searches.

Developing Outcomes-based Assessment for Learner-centered Education: A Faculty Introduction; Driscoll & Wood

The authors--a once-skeptical chemistry professor and a director of assessment sensitive to the concerns of her teacher colleagues--use a personal voice to describe the basics of outcomes-based assessment. The purpose of the book is to empower faculty to develop and maintain ownership of assessment by articulating the learning outcomes and evidence of learning that are appropriate for their courses and programs. The authors offer readers a guide to the not always tidy process of articulating expectations, defining criteria and standards, and aligning course content consistently with desired outcomes. The wealth of examples and stories, including accounts of successes and false starts, provide a realistic and honest guide to what's involved in the institutionalization of assessment.

Hallmarks of Effective Outcomes Assessment; Banta

This booklet brings together the best guidance and practices that have appeared in the award-winning newsletter Assessment Update to illustrate time-tested principles for all aspects of assessment from planning and implementing to sustaining and improving assessment efforts over time. The booklet details the specific hallmarks that are required for the success of any assessment program-from leadership and staff development to the assessment of processes as well as outcomes, ongoing communication among constituents, and more. It presents a range of articles that reveal what these hallmarks look like in action and that provide examples of institution-wide approaches as well as specific strategies that have been used to ensure success and ongoing improvement. For the reader who is new to assessment this is an excellent and easy-to-use tool for getting a good understanding of what quality assessment looks like. For those with more experience, this booklet provides a wealth of specific strategies for improving existing programs or introducing new ones. Also, included is a matrix of hallmarks and articles, to help readers better match the articles to the hallmarks they illustrate.

Assessing Outcomes and Improving Achievement: Tips and Tools for Using Rubrics; Rhodes

This publication provides practical advice on the development and effective use of rubrics to evaluate college student achievement at various levels. Rubrics for fifteen liberal learning outcomes are included, and can be readily adapted to reflect the missions, cultures, and practices of individual institutions and programs. Developed by faculty members and other academic professionals, and tested on a variety of campuses, the rubrics establish measurable criteria for assessing each outcome at beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels of accomplishment.

Statistics 4^th Edition; Freedman, Pisani, & Purves

Renowned for its clear prose and no-nonsense emphasis on core concepts, Statistics covers fundamentals using real examples to illustrate the techniques. The Fourth Edition has been carefully revised and updated to reflect current data.

Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches; Creswell

The eagerly anticipated Fourth Edition of the title that pioneered the comparison of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research design is here! For all three approaches, Creswell includes a preliminary consideration of philosophical assumptions, a review of the literature, an assessment of the use of theory in research approaches, and refl ections about the importance of writing and ethics in scholarly inquiry. He also presents the key elements of the research process, giving specific c attention to each approach. The Fourth Editionincludes extensively revised mixed methods coverage, increased coverage of ethical issues in research, and an expanded emphasis on worldview perspectives.

Applications of Intermediate/Advanced Statistics in Institutional Research; Coughlin

Similar to the learning objectives of the Applied Statistics Institute, the goal of this monograph is to educate the reader about: uses of non-parametric statistics for common assessment activities; applications of regression techniques to higher education problems and issues; uses of ANOVA for rating scale data, student performance data, and other IR data; applications of techniques for identifying groups and determining how groups differ; uses of advanced statistics to provide evidence of institutional effectiveness; and applications of multilevel modeling techniques to common institutional research questions.

The focus of this monograph is not to cover each statistical area in depth; rather it is to describe the theory and application of these procedures to Institutional Research settings. As a result, the reader should be familiar with basic statistical principles and applications. In addition, the reader may need to refer to supplemental readings provided within each chapter to more fully understand each statistical application.

A Brief History of Student Learning Assessment: How We Got Where We Are and a Proposal for Where to Go Next; Shavelson

A Brief History of Student Learning Assessment offers a historical overview of testing in higher education and a proposal for a more productive approach to student learning assessment in the future that builds on the current Collegiate Learning Assessment. It provides an important context for today's renewed calls for greater accountability and, more importantly, the urgent need to raise levels of student achievement. This publication helps us better understand the "state-of-the-art" in standardized testing today, and what the academy should ask - and what it can and cannot expect - from standardized testing in the future.

Technology and Assessment: A Tale of Two Interpretations; Russell

Together, the words technology and assessment have different meaning for different people. Those who work with educational or instructional technology take these words to mean assessing the impacts of technology on teaching and learning. Test developers and psychometricians, however, consider ways in which computer-based technologies can be used to enhance current approaches to student assessment.

This book examines technology and assessment from both perspectives by examining past, current and promising methodologies and applications in both fields. The influences instructional uses of technology and the increasing reliance on testing to gauge student and school performance have on one another are also explored. The book concludes by describing an organizational structure that could bring instructional applications of technology and assessment practices into closer alignment.

How Accreditation Influences Assessment; Ratcliff, Lubinescu, Gaffney

With the shift in accreditation from standards to student learning outcomes, and institutional and programmatic requirements to demonstrate student outcomes increasing; this volume offers timely perspectives and research on the latest developments in accreditation and assessment. The authors-accrediting agency officials, campus leaders involved with accreditation and assessment, and higher education researchers -- discuss six salient new directions in accreditation and assessment process that together offer effective ways to enhance student, faculty, and institutional learning. Examples of working accreditation programs include new methods of distance-education program assessment, an institutional accreditation self-study at the University of Vermont, and the Urban Universities Portfolio Project, a national study involving six urban universities who are using electronic portfolios to provide public access on student learning outcomes. The authors also present an initial review of accreditation and assessment backgrounds, changing standards, and underlying issues, as well as a survey of more than twenty written accreditation policies, making this volume a valuable resource for anyone planning or conducting an institutional self-study as a vehicle for change and renewal. This is the 113th issue of the quarterly journal New Directions for Higher Education.

How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition; National Research Council

Like the original hardcover edition, this book offers exciting new research about the mind and the brain that provides answers to a number of compelling questions. When do infants begin to learn? How do experts learn and how is this different from non-experts? What can teachers and schools do-with curricula, classroom settings, and teaching methods--to help children learn most effectively? New evidence from many branches of science has significantly added to our understanding of what it means to know, from the neural processes that occur during learning to the influence of culture on what people see and absorb.

How People Learn examines these findings and their implications for what we teach, how we teach it, and how we assess what our children learn. The book uses exemplary teaching to illustrate how approaches based on what we now know result in in-depth learning. This new knowledge calls into question concepts and practices firmly entrenched in our current education system.

Developing a Moral Compass: What is the Campus Climate for Ethics and Academic Integrity?; Dey and Associates

Developing a Moral Compass focuses on whether—and how well—educational environments foster academic integrity and promote ethical responsibilities to self and others. The report presents findings from a unique campus climate assessment tool—administered in 2007 to 24,000 students and 9,000 academic administrators, faculty, and student affairs professionals at twenty-three colleges and universities—regarding opportunities for developing competence in ethical and moral reasoning and cultivating personal and academic integrity. Issues addressed in the publication include sources of support for students to discuss their moral and ethical challenges and the impact of academic honor codes. Ideal for on-campus and campus-community discussions about ethics and academic integrity, Developing a Moral Compass is the second report from the Core Commitments initiative.

Departments that Work: Building & Sustaining Cultures of Excellence; Wergin & Bensimon

Evaluation in departments is widespread but often fails to spark positive change. Based on his extensive work with academic departments across the country, Wergin explains that successful department evaluation exists only when faculty and departments have a strong influence on the purposes, processes, and methods of evaluation. The central purpose of Departments That Work is how academic programs can make evaluation more useful and critical reflection more likely.

Topics include:

* How quality has become confused with such concepts as effectiveness, productivity, and marketability and how it might more constructively be conceived as focusing on the engagement of the department with its constituencies

* An examination of both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators of faculty work, the concept of organizational motivation, and the factors influencing identification with the institution and motivation to contribute to it

* The three critical factors of effective department evaluation

* How academic leaders can create a culture of engagement

* How to define and negotiate academic values with diverse stakeholders

* How to ask the right questions and collect the right idea

* How to determine standards and make meaning of evaluation data

* An overall summary of specific recommendations for academic leaders and departmental faculty, including an appendix of the constructs presented in each chapter

The Learning Paradigm College; Tagg

In The Learning Paradigm College, John Tagg builds on the ground-breaking Change magazine article he coauthored with Robert Barr in 1995, “From Teaching to Learning; A New Paradigm for Undergraduate Education.” That piece defined a paradigm shift happening in American higher education, placing more importance on learning outcomes and less on the quantity of instruction. As Tagg defines it, “Where the Instruction Paradigm highlights formal processes, the Learning Paradigm emphasizes results or outcomes. Where the Instruction Paradigm attends to classes, the Learning Paradigm attends to students.”

The Learning Paradigm College presents a new lens through which faculty and administrators can see their own institutions and their own work. The book examines existing functional frameworks and offers a way to reenvision and recast many familiar aspects of college work and college life, so that readers may better understand their learners and move toward a framework that focuses on learning outcomes.

Divided into five parts, the book introduces the Learning Paradigm, concentrates on understanding our learners, provides a framework for producing learning, discusses the six essential features of the Learning Paradigm college, and focuses on how to become a Learning Paradigm college.

Proving and Improving: Strategies for Assessing the First College Year; Swing

The essays in this collection, initially written for an online audience, focus on the philosophy, methods, and outcomes of assessing the first-year experience of college students. Several recurrent themes highlight general agreement about best practices in first-year assessment, but the collection contains some differences of opinion also.

A Roadmap for Improvement of Student Learning and Support Services through Assessment; Nichols & Nichols

This new work completely replaces A Practitioner's Handbook for Institutional Effectiveness and Student Outcomes Assessment as the foundation volume in the series of five volumes that together constitute a step-by-step guide to the planning and implementation of assessment procedures at multiple levels across the institution. The principal authors have advised and assisted more than three hundred and fifty institutions, from small two-year colleges through major research institutions in every regional accrediting association, in designing and implementing a model for assessment of student outcomes and institutional effectiveness. With nearly one hundred charts and figures and many examples of assessment tests and surveys and related documents over a broad range of topics, Road Map provides a simple and focused pathway to successful implementation. The straightforward explanations and examples lead the campus across the Five-Column Model to "closing the loop" through the use assessment results to improve student learning and educational support and administrative services. Road Map also acknowledges the growing maturity of the assessment field by devoting considerable attention to the use of actual results to improve student learning and support services. Additionally, it provides separate chapters concerning assessment in: administrative and educational support services, general education, and two-year colleges, as well as graduate and professional level occupational programs. In each instance the narrative explains the difference in implementation in that specific context and provides examples of successful implementation. Road Map, with the companion monographs to which it is cross-referenced, provides comprehensive guidance and support for successful implementation at the institutional, departmental, and program levels.

A Practitioner’s Handbook for Institutional Effectiveness and Student Outcomes Assessment Implementation (3^rd ed.); Nichols

The Third edition of this standard reference work for college and university administrators charged with designing and implementing a model for assessment of student outcomes and institutional effectiveness. It has been revised and updated throughout and issued in a larger, more convenient format for ease of use at all appropriate levels. This is a key evaluation book used to show results and to improve, develop and implementing programs when dealing with assessment procedures. It has many examples from the growing record of successful implementation on campuses throughout the US.

Assessing Global Learning: Matching Good Intentions with Good Practices; Musil

Assessing Global Learning is designed to help colleges and universities construct and assess the impact of multiple, well-defined, developmental pathways through which students can acquire global learning. Specific program examples demonstrate how and where curricular and co-curricular learning can be embedded at various levels from individual courses to institutional mission. The publication argues for establishing clear global learning goals that inform departments, divisions, and campus life and suggests assessment frameworks. Includes a sample quantitative assessment survey and several assessment templates.

Planning and Assessment in Higher Education: Demonstrating Institutional Effectiveness; Middaugh

Planning and Assessment in Higher Education provides guidance for assessing and promoting institutional effectiveness. The book contains a wide range of issues, from measures of effectiveness to communicating with the public. Written by an expert in the field, with titles such as the Assistant VP for Institutional Research and Planning, director of national costs of instruction research project, as well as the Vice Chair of an accreditation agency, this is an essential resource for university leaders for achieving institutional effectiveness.

Assessing for Learning: Building a Sustainable Commitment Across the Institution; Maki

Peggy Maki sees as an integrated and authentic approach to providing evidence of student learning based on the work that students produce along the chronology of their learning. She believes that assessment needs to be humanized, as opposed to standardized, to take into account the demographics of institutions, as students do not all start at the same place in their learning. Students also need the tools to assess their own progress.

In addition to updating and expanding the contents of her first edition to reflect changes in assessment practices and developments over the last seven years, such as the development of technology-enabled assessment methods and the national need for institutions to demonstrate that they are using results to improve student learning, Maki focuses on ways to deepen program and institution-level assessment within the context of collective inquiry about student learning.

Assessing Conditions to Enhance Educational Effectiveness: The Inventory for Student Engagement and Success; Kuh, Kinzie, Schuh, & Whitt

From the authors of Student Success in College—the book that describes the policies, programs, and practices of twenty colleges and universities that have created success-oriented campus cultures and learning environments—comes the next-step resource to help an institution assess whether these conditions exist. The authors present the Inventory for Student Engagement and Success (ISES), a self-guided framework for conducting a comprehensive, systematic, institution wide analysis. The process also can be applied to areas within an institution, such as a school or college within a university, an academic or student affairs division, or a department or program. The ISES includes sets of diagnostic queries that focus on the six properties and conditions common to high-performing schools as well as the five clusters of effective educational practices featured on the National Survey of Student Engagement. Suggestions are offered to illustrate how the information generated from the ISES process can be used for various purposes including accreditation self-studies, program reviews, staff development, faculty and governing board retreats, and strategic planning.

Assessment Reconsidered: Institutional Effectiveness for Student Success; Keeling

Making meaning of how, what, when, and where students learn is a vital, exciting, and inspiring component of higher education. Increasing external demands for accountability and internal commitments to improvement are amplifying the need for comprehensive assessment practices. Assessment Reconsidered: Institutional Effectiveness for Student Success promotes the shared ownership of assessment planning among faculty, student affairs educators, administrators, and students. As a project of the International Center for Student Success and Institutional Accountability (ICSSIA), Assessment Reconsidered focuses on the collaborative use of all campus resources in promoting student success. Written by an ensemble of educators with broad experience in assessment theory and practice in higher education, this illuminating work helps both student affairs professionals and faculty members address internal and public questions about the functioning of post secondary institutions by reconsidering assessment policies, patterns, and practices in colleges and universities. While the book acknowledges and responds to greater expectations for institutional accountability, its focus is on building capacity to engage in evidence-based, reflective practice and supporting educators in doing their best work. Assessment Reconsidered is not primarily a workbook or "how to" manual; instead, it addresses the substantive aspects of assessment and prepares readers to begin or improve assessment practice; it lays the foundation of concepts, knowledge, and skills that is essential for effectiveness.

Revising General Education and Avoiding the Potholes: A Guide for Curricular Change; Gaston & Gaff

Strategies for curricular change in the reform of general education are as important as the substance of the change. Fifty pitfalls and common errors in the process of reform are enumerated in this practical guide essential for general education committees. Revising General Education provides practical advice for how to advance a successful general education reform process—including tips in the areas of task force objectives and procedures, concepts of general education, program planning, proposal approval, and program implementation. Ideal for general education reform committees and faculty senate curriculum committees.

Advancing Liberal Education: Assessment Practices on Campus; Ferguson

This publication presents the stories of six different colleges and universities that have developed innovative programs to advance and assess key liberal education outcomes. Originally written for AAC&U News, these stories--which focus on writing, information literacy, understanding of diversity, critical thinking, quantitative reasoning, and civic engagement--offer models for effective assessment practices. Also included is information about finding additional assessment resources.

A Field Guide to Academic Leadership; Diamond

"Once again, Bob Diamond has cut to the heart of the matter and has given us a field guide (actually a handbook) of real, hands-on academic leadership. He has assembled an elite group of contributors who provide insights and guidance, which will be useful for all academic leaders, new and old, public or private, CEO or assistant."
-- Charles E. Glassick, senior associate emeritus, The Carnegie Foundation

peerReview: Capstones and Integrative Learning; Association of American Colleges and Universities

Senior capstones and other culminating experiences require students nearing the end of their college years to create a project of some sort that integrates and applies what they've learned. This issue will show examples of learning outcomes and best practices for capstone courses and programs.

More Reasons to Hope: Diversity Matters in Higher Ed.By: AAC&U

Honoring the late Edgar Beckham and his profound influence on higher education, More Reasons for Hope examines the trends in diversity education since an earlier AAC&U monograph published a decade ago called Reasons for Hope. The monograph features a major address by Edgar Beckham that identifies intellectual, structural, and political challenges that need to be addressed in the next generation of diversity work. It charts progress and setbacks and includes more than thirty current exemplary campus diversity programs, policies, and practices from across the country.

Five High-Impact Practices: Research on Learning Outcomes, Completion, and Quality; Brownell and Kuh

This monograph examines what educational research reveals about five educational practices: first-year seminars, learning communities, service learning, undergraduate research, and capstone experiences. The authors explore questions such as: What is the impact on students who participate in these practices? Is the impact the same for both traditional students and those who come from historically underserved student populations? The monograph includes a foreword by George D. Kuh, "High-Impact Practices: Retrospective and Prospective," and recommendations for how to improve the quality of high-impact practices.

The Assessment of Doctoral Education:Emerging Criteria and NewModels for Improving OutcomesBy: Borkowski, Denecke, and Mak

This book provides a foundation for faculty and academicleaders of doctoral programs to promote inquiryinto the educational practices that define theirprograms and contribute to graduate students' learning.It presents an array of examples of new program-and student-level assessment practices. Theideas and practices described here expand programreview to include evidence of student learning--thatis, students' demonstration of their knowledge, abilities,habits of mind, ways of knowing, ways of problemsolving, and dispositions--through direct andindirect assessment methods that verify or challengethe efficacy of educational practices.

Ensuring Quality & Taking High ImpactPractices to Scale.By: Kuh & O’Donnell

Building on previous AAC&U reports, this publicationpresents research on specific educational practicescorrelated with higher levels of academic challenge,student engagement, and achievement. Thepublication features the relationship between thesepractices and improvements in retention and graduationrates and advice on how to ensure that all studentsexperience multiple high-impact practices.Detailed case studies show how five campuses areproviding high-impact practices more pervasivelyand systematically.

 Assessing College Student Learning: Evaluating Alternative Models, Using Multiple Methods; Sternberg, Penn, Hawkins, and Reed

 Campus leaders face a bewildering array of differentassessment methods-standardized or locally designedtests and inventories, indirect methods focusing onstudent self-reports of engagement or gains in learning,portfolios, and other performance-based methods.This publication will help readers make sense ofthe broad assessment landscape. Part 1, by assessmentexpert Robert Sternberg and his colleagues,examines the psychological theories of learning andachievement that underlie these diverse methods andoffers practical guidance on how to select amongthem. Part 2—five case studies—presents profiles ofhow different institutions are implementing comprehensiveapproaches to assessing student learning andthe benefits of using multiple methods in combination.

 Liberal Education Outcomes: A PreliminaryReport on Student Achievementin CollegeBy: AAC&U

 This report on liberal education outcomes provides awide-ranging and thought-provoking overview ofstudent achievement in college. It examines a set ofoutcomes that are highly prized both by the academyand by employers, which include critical thinking,quantitative literacy, communication skills, ethicalreasoning, and civic engagement. Drawing togetherresearch from diverse sources and studies, this reportexamines what we know—and how much we stillneed to find out—about student achievement onthese and other important learning outcomes acrossthe several years of college

 Taking Responsibility for the Qualityof the Baccalaureate DegreeBy: AAC&U

 Describes emerging consensus among educationleaders about liberal learning outcomes essential forall baccalaureate graduates.

 Making Progress? What We KnowAbout the Achievement of LiberalEducation OutcomesBy: Finley

 This new report provides an up-to-date overview ofnational data from a variety of studies of studentlearning, including the NSSE, Wabash NationalStudy, CIRP, PSRI, and others. It presents comparativedata on achievement over time across an arrayof liberal education outcomes—such as criticalthinking, writing, civic engagement, global competence,and social responsibility. The report contrasts the very positive evidence drawn from what studentsthink they have learned with the much more sobering evidence from national tests about what students actually can do in such areas as critical thinking, writing, and quantitative reasoning. It also reflects the growing evidence that how we construct the learning environment, e.g., by emphasizing high-impact practices, is a crucial component both in assessing learning and in raising students' level of achievement. Making Progress also underscores the educational value of new assessment practices, such as e-portfolios and scoring rubrics, that move students' actual work—papers, performances, research, etc.—to the center of assessment focus.

 A Brief History of Student LearningAssessmentBy: Schavelson

 A Brief History of Student Learning Assessmentoffers a historical overview of testing in highereducation and a proposal for a more productive approachto student learning assessment in the futurethat builds on the current Collegiate Learning Assessment.It provides an important context for today'srenewed calls for greater accountability and, moreimportantly, the urgent need to raise levels of studentachievement. This publication helps us better understandthe "state-of-the-art" in standardized testingtoday, and what the academy should ask - and what itcan and cannot expect - from standardized testing inthe future

 Assessing Student Learning: Peer ReviewSingle Issue (Vol.9 No. 2)By: AAC&U

 As campuses implement more complex assignments,community placements, internships, student researchprograms, and other engaged learning practices, theopportunity for students to demonstrate complex capacitieswill be increased. This issue addresses a varietyof approaches to achieving and assessing theadvanced learning outcomes derived from these practices.It includes a special focus on developing andassessing capstone courses.

 Assessment in Cycles of Improvement:Faculty Designs for Essential Learning Outcomes By: Miller

 This publication features a series of reports on how selected colleges and universities foster and assess student learning in twelve liberal education outcome areas, including writing, quantitative literacy, critical thinking, ethics, intercultural knowledge, and information literacy. Moving from goals to experiences,assessments, and improvements driven by assessment data, each institutional story illustrate show complex learning can be shaped over time and across programs to bring students to higher levels of achievement of these important outcomes.

 General Education and the AssessmentReform AgendaBy: Ewell

 Author Peter Ewell calls for accountability in highereducation by focusing on abilities, alignment, assessment,and action. Drawing on the architecture ofAAC&U's 2002 report Greater Expectations, Ewelluses these four "A-words" to reflect on how we canlink assessment and general education, while assumingcollective responsibility for the academy and itsintegrity

 Integrative Learning: Mapping theTerrainBy: Huber and Hutchings

 Published by AAC&U and the Carnegie Foundationfor the Advancement of Teaching This paper exploresthe challenges to integrative learning today aswell as its longer tradition and rationale within a visionof liberal education. In outlining promising directionsfor campus work, the authors draw onAAC&U's landmark report, Greater Expectations, aswell as the Carnegie Foundation's long-standing initiativeon the scholarship of teaching and learning.Readers will find a map of the terrain of integrativelearning on which promising new developments inundergraduate education can be cultivated, learnedfrom, and built upon.

 The Art & Science of Assessing GeneralEducation Outcomes: A PracticalGuideBy: Leskes & Wright

 This guide offers practical recommendations for individualsinvolved with the assessment of generaleducation programs and outcomes on campus. It includesa step-by-step assessment checklist, tips forbetter assessment, and examples of assessment tools,methods, and rubrics for assessing a variety of keyoutcomes of a quality general education.

 Civic Engagement and Student Success:A Resonant Relationship CivicEngagement and Student Success: AResonant RelationshipBy: AAC&U

 This issue of Diversity & Democracy highlights currentresearch on the connections between civic engagementand student success, defined broadlyacross a range of outcomes. It shares civically engagedprograms and related educational strategiesthat yield student success by a variety of measures.

 Liberal Education: The CompletionAgendaBy: AAC&U

 This issue presents several perspectives on the ongoingnational efforts to increase college completionrates, focusing in particular on the potential negativeunintended consequences for educational quality.Other topics include successful models of change forSTEM reform, program-level assessment, the developmentof liberal education outcomes at America'sservice academies, outcomes of global learning,school-college collaboration, and the uses of mobiletechnology.

 Peer Review Spring 2013: Models forStudent Success - Developing a CommunityCollege Student RoadmapBy: AAC&U

 This issue highlights lessons learned from Developinga Community College Student Roadmap, theLEAP project designed to assist community collegesin creating robust and proactive programs of academicsupport. These programs-tied to expectedlearning outcomes-engage students at entrance andteach them how to become active partners in theirown quest for educational success

 Liberal Education: What Do EmployersWant from College Graduates?By: AAC&U

 This issue presents the findings from a new nationalsurvey of employer priorities for college learningand student success, along with the text of a newcompact through which employers and leaders ofhigher education institutions have pledged to makecommon cause in behalf of the quality of collegelearning; additional context for both is supplied by apair of articles on what graduates need to succeed, inlife and work, over the long term. Also included arearticles on how American education must change inorder to meet twenty-first-century imperatives, onhow students define success in college, on ways toachieve greater transparency in teaching and ways toencourage greater self-examination and reflectionamong students, and on a contemporary decline ofempathy.

 Using the VALUE Rubrics for Improvement of Learning and Authentic Assessment; Rhodes & Finley

 This publication addresses key elements of, and questions frequently raised about, the development and use of the VALUE rubrics for assessment of student learning. It provides information about rubric-based assessment approaches—including validity, reliability, and rubric modification—and faculty training in the use of rubrics. Specific examples of how campuses are using the VALUE rubrics to improve student learning are also provided.

 The Lumina Degree QualificationsProfile (DQP): Implications for AssessmentBy: Ewell

 Originally published by the National Institute forLearning Outcomes Assessment, this publicationprovides an in-depth exploration of the latest modelsfor assessing the advanced college-level learning outcomesarticulated in the Degree Qualifications Profile(DQP). Developed by the Lumina Foundationand released in “beta” form in 2011, the DQP describesthe knowledge, skills, and applications thatprepare graduates to succeed in the economy, civilsociety, and their own lives. Featuring reflectionsfrom two of the primary authors of the DQP, thispublication offers guidance to stakeholders on howbest to assess learning in relation to the competenciesarticulated in the DQP. NILOA's original publicationis available online

 Assessing Underserved Student' Engagementin High-Impact PracticesBy: Finley & McNair

 This publication presents findings from a nationalstudy conducted by AAC&U researchers to investigatethe impact of engagement in high-impact practiceson traditionally underserved populations(defined here as first-generation, minority, transfer,and low-income students).The mixed-method analysisincludes student-level data on engaged learning atthirty-eight participating institutions-from the statehigher education systems in California, Oregon, andWisconsin-drawn from the National Survey of StudentEngagement (NSSE), as well as qualitative dataobtained through student focus groups held at nineselected campuses. This report serves as a guide forcampus-based inquiry to further our understandingof underserved student engagement with high-impactpractices. The publication also includes a toolkit onassessing equity in high-impact practices developedby the Center for Urban Education at the Universityof Southern California.

 Investing in Success: Cost-EffectiveStrategies to Increase Student SuccessBy: Wellman & Brusi

 This publication provides advice and planning toolsto help educational leaders invest in high-impactpractices, despite budget constraints. It presentsways to evaluate both the benefits and costs of highimpactpractices, and strategies for investing in innovations.Building on research from the Access toSuccess initiative and the Delta Cost Project, the authorsprovide examples of campuses that have madewise investments developing or scaling particularpractices, with positive results for student learning,graduation rates, and the bottom line.

 Assessing Student Learning in GeneralEducation: Good Practice CaseStudiesBy: Bresciani, Zelna, and Anderson

 Many resources on implementing general educationare available, but few are written to help those facultyand administrators responsible for general educationwith its evaluation. This book is a compilationof good practice case studies that are intended to assistfaculty and administrators in both two-year andfour-year institutions with the evaluation of studentlearning as it relates to general education. There areseveral ways in which to evaluate general education,and each case study varies in its approach. How dodifferences in institutional culture affect the evaluationof general education? Are institutions that lackthe capacity or the culture to work across departmental or division lines to identify learning outcomesor the criteria to evaluate those outcomes employingeffecting outcomes-based assessment?

 Student Success in College: CreatingConditions that MatterBy: Kinzie, Kuh, Schuh, and Whitt

 Student Success in College describes policies, programs,and practices that a diverse set of institutionshave used to enhance student achievement. Thisbook clearly shows the benefits of student learningand educational effectiveness that can be realizedwhen these conditions are present. Based on theDocumenting Effective Educational Practice (DEEP)project from the Center for Postsecondary Researchat Indiana University, this book provides concreteexamples from twenty institutions that other collegesand universities can learn from and adapt to helpcreate a success-oriented campus culture and learningenvironment.

 Understanding the Role of Academicand Student Affairs Collaboration inCreating a Successful LearningEnvironmentBy: Adriana Kezar

 The topic of collaboration between academic andstudent affairs is now more important than ever ifcolleges and universities are to create seamlesslearning environments and educate students for thenew collaborative work context. Institutions facethe challenge of showing students by their own behaviorthat they are committed to collaboration,while still acknowledging that partnerships can bemessy, that they can take more time, and that theycan be frustrating. This volume examines authenticmodels of collaboration that will help to developsuccessful student leaders for the new century. Itreviews the results of a national study on academicand student affairs collaborations and provides organizationalmodels and facilitators of change aswell as examples of facilitative strategies in action.

 Outcomes-Based Academic and Co-Curricular Program ReviewBy: Bresciani

 This book is intended for faculty, administratorsand staff responsible for implementing and sustainingoutcomes-based assessment program review. Itaims to help them understand the "what", "why"and "how" of outcomes-based assessment programreview. Rather than adopting a prescriptive approach,it provides a rich array of case studies andideas as a basis for reflection and discussion to helpinstitutions develop solutions that are appropriateto their own missions and cultures.

 Redesigning Higher Education: Producing Dramatic Gains in Student LearningBy: Gardiner

 Reviews and synthesizes numerous studies of college student development and college effects on students.Analyses the effectiveness of common practices in curriculum, instruction, campus climate, and academic advising as revealed by research. Provides an overview of research-based recommendations for best practice in these areas, and many resources for improving practice, ideas for assessment, and evidence for developing a sense of urgency for change,and a vision of what is possible today.

 Assessment: Case Studies, Experience,and Practice (Case Studies ofTeaching in Higher Education)By: Schwartz and Webb

 The fourth volume in this series deals with one ofthe ubiquitous higher and further education subjects.With a practice-based approach, the text avoids beingoverly academic and instead uses a case studyformat to detail a wide range of approaches to assessment.

 Measuring What Matters:Competency-Based Learning Modelsin Higher EducationBy: Vorhees

 Intended as a toolkit for academic administrators,faculty and researchers to deal effectively with therapid emergence of competency-based learningmodels across higher education, this volume providespractical advice and proven techniques forimplementing and evaluating these models. Drawingfrom a recent National Postsecondary EducationCooperative project that examined data and policyimplications across public and private institutions aswell as an industrial setting, readers will find an inventoryof strong practices to utilize in evaluatingcompetency-based initiatives

 Measuring Quality: ChoosingAmong Surveys and OtherAssessments of College QualityBy: Borden and Owens

 The purpose of this guide is to articulate a set ofquestions and issues that campus leaders can reviewwhen deciding whether to participate in a given surveyor use a specific assessment instrument. Theguide also describes some of the major national surveysand assessments. Although the guide does notrate or recommend these services, it suggests thecriteria that campus leaders should use to determinethe use and usefulness of any such instrument orservice based on specific campus needs, capabilities,and goals. The guide is divided into three majorsections. The first poses some general questionsthat are important to consider before decidingwhether to participate, or continue to participate, ina national assessment. The second section providescommon descriptive information for some of thenational assessments that were popular when theguide was written. The third section reviews somespecific questions and issues regarding the choice ofa specific instrument or service and how to optimizeparticipation.

 Emblems of Quality in HigherEducation: Developing andSustaining High Quality Programs

 In addition to combing the research literature, theauthors incorporated interviews with 781 students,faculty, and administrators in a broad range of academicand professional disciplines at a wide varietyof colleges and universities. Their goal was to determinethe factors that consistently foster excellenceand result in positive learning experiences for students.In the course of their investigation they identifiedseventeen specific factors, which are describedhere along with the actions taken by administrators,faculty, and students to create an environmentin which educational excellence thrives.

 Student Assessment-As-Learning atAlverno CollegeBy: Alverno College Faculty

 Based on the practice of Alverno College facultyand staff since 1973, this book explicates their theoryof assessment for student learning. The book includesspecific examples of assessment instruments.While published in the mid-nineties, this book hasretained its relevance over time as a key resource forthose desiring an understanding of the Alverno Collegecurriculum

 The Departmental Guide and RecordBook for Student Outcomes Assessmentand Institutional Effectiveness

 The Departmental Guide, which has sold more than30,000 copies, in this third edition focuses exclusivelyon assessment of instructional programs. Sectionson assessment in graduate and professionalprograms and an introduction to assessment in generaleducation have been added, as has been expandedcoverage of topics encountered as institutions attemptto "close the loop" to include utilization of assessmentresults to improve student learning. 7" x10", 80 pages.

 Thinking About Teaching and Learning:Developing Habits of Learningwith First Year College andUniversity StudentsBy: Leamnson

 Building on the insights offered by recent discoveriesabout the biological basis of learning, and on hisown thought-provoking definitions of teaching,learning and education, the author proceeds to thepractical details of instruction that teachers are mostinterested in--the things that make or break teaching.Practical and thoughtful, and based on forty years ofteaching, wide reading and much reflection, RobertLeamnson provides teachers with a map to developtheir own teaching philosophy, and effective nutsand-bolts advice.

 Designing and Assessing Course Curricula:A Practical GuideBy: Diamond

 A unique book and an excellent book written by anauthor of unparalleled reputation. Of all the literatureon course and curriculum design I have read,none comes close to the level of advice provided inthese pages. Highly recommended for faculty at everylevel.Howard B. Altman, director, linguistics program,University of LouisvilleDesigning and Assessing Courses and Curriculareflects the best current knowledge and practicein course and curriculum design and connects thisknowledge with the critical task of assessing andlearning outcomes at both course and curricular levels.Tested and refined through long-term use andstudy, the change model presented in this bookshows how to move from concept to actualization,from theory to practice.

 Assessments A-Z: A Collection of 50Questionnaires, Instruments, and InventoriesBy: Burn & Payment

 Save valuable time and resources with this comprehensiveand easy-to-use collection of reproducibleassessments. With fifty assessments to choose from,you're sure to find one--and probably more!--thatsuits your training needs.

 A Practical Guide to Needs AssessmentBy: Gupta

 This how-to handbook is perfect for anyone seekinga methodical approach to needs assessment. You'llget a treasury of tools: worksheets, ready-to-useforms, and templates for planning a course of action.The accompanying disk, packed with job aids,enables you to customize materials for your ownuse.

 Effective Grading: A Tool for Learningand AssessmentBy: Walvoord & Anderson

 This new edition of the classic book has been thoroughlyupdated and revised with the latest research.The book offers a hands-on guide for evaluatingstudent work and examines the link between teachingand grading. The authors show how to integratethe grading process with course objectives and offera wealth of information about student learning. Thebook also includes information on integration oftechnology and online teaching, and is filled withmore illustrative examples, including a sample syllabus.This revised resource can help any professorenrich student learning in the classroom.

 Assessing for Learning: Building aSustainable Commitment Across theInstitutionBy: Maki

 Exploring the continuum of students' learning, thisbook sets the assessment of learning within thetwin contexts of: (1) the level of a program, department,division, or school within an institution; and(2) the level of an institution, based on its missionstatement, educational philosophy, and educationalobjectives. Each chapter explores ways to positionassessment within program- and institutional-levelprocesses, decisions, structures, practices, andchannels of communication.

 Assessment Practice in Student Affairs:An Applications ManualBy: Schuh and Upcraft

 When Assessment in Student Affairs was first publishedin 1996, readers found a practical context forviewing the power of assessment across the domainof student services. Since then, John H. Schuh andM. Lee Upcraft have received numerous requestsfor more specific guidance to assessing and communicatingthe value of student affairs. This manualcontinues the work begun in their earlier bookand provides a full range of tools for conductingeffective assessments.

 Designing and Assessing Courses andCurricula: A Practical Guide (3rd edition)By: Diamond

 Designing and Assessing Courses and Curriculareflects the most current knowledge and practice incourse and curriculum design and connects thisknowledge with the critical task of assessing learningoutcomes at both course and curricular levels.This thoroughly revised and expanded third editionof the best-selling book positions course design as atool for educational change and contains a wealth ofnew material including new chapters, case examples,and resources.

 Assessment Clear and Simple: APractical Guide for Institutions, Departments,and General Education

 Assessment Clear and Simple is "Assessment 101"in a book--a concise and step-by-step guide writtenfor everyone who participates in the assessment process.This practical book helps to make assessmentsimple, cost-efficient, and useful to the institution,while at the same time meeting the requirements ofaccreditation agencies, legislatures, review boards,and others.

 The Department Head's Guide to AssessmentImplementation in Administrativeand Education Support UnitsBy: Nichols & Nichols

 The first publication to recognize that while administrativeand educational support (AES) units shouldconduct assessment to improve their services, theirassessment focus and procedures are substantivelydifferent from those in the institution's instructionalprograms. The Department Head's Guide leads AESstaff through formulation of administrative serviceobjectives, to identification of means of assessment,as well as primary and secondary criteria for success,and ultimately to using the results of assessmentactivities to improve services. Among theAES units for which the authors provide examplesof the process are the Office of the Registrar, theLibrary, the Career Center, and the Accounting Department.Assessment implementation in public serviceand research units is also discussed.

 Introduction to Rubrics: AnAssessment Tool to Save GradingTime, Convey Effective Feedbackand Promote Student LearningBy: Stevens and Levi

 This book defines what rubrics are, and how toconstruct and use them. It provides a completeintroduction for anyone starting out to integraterubrics in their teaching. The authors go on todescribe a variety of processes to construct rubrics,including some which involve student participation.They demonstrate how interactive rubrics--aprocess involving assessors and the assessed indefining the criteria for an assignment or objective--can be effective, not only in involving studentsmore actively in their learning, but in establishingconsistent standards of assessment at the program,department and campus level.

 Assessing General Education ProgramsBy: Allen

General education is the core of the undergraduate experience. It provides a lasting foundation for students’ future academic, civil, cultural, economic, and social lives. Additionally, as part of most general education curricula, general education as well as first-year experience programs are becoming virtually universal in colleges and universities; first-year seminars often are integrated into general education programs to promote student retention, engagement, and success. The assessment of these institution-wide efforts is particularly challenging, but many campuses have made substantial progress from which we can learn.

Written for college and university administrators, assessment officers, faculty, and staff who support general education and first-year experience programs, this book is a hands-on guide for developing, aligning, and assessing general education programs in meaningful, manageable, and sustainable ways. The author presents a variety of approaches and dozens of examples to help readers understand what other campuses are doing and develop a repertoire of their own methods so they can make informed decisions about their programs.

 Benchmarking in Higher Education:Adapting Best Practices to ImproveQualityBy: Jeffery W. Alstete

 Benchmarking is a systematic process for evaluatingwork processes and recognizing the most efficientpractices. This report explores the literatureon benchmarking in higher education and discussesits components as a tool for quality improvement.

 2011 CHEA Almanac of ExternalQuality ReviewBy: Council for Higher Education Accreditation

 Topics addressed include accreditation and its value,institutions and programs in the United Statesaccredited by recognized accrediting organizations,distance education, transfer of credit and degreemills and the danger they pose.

 Learning Through Assessment: A ResourceGuide for Higher EducationBy: University Leadership Council

 This book is intended to provide college administrators,faculty, and researchers with a guide to resourcesconcerned with assessment at the postsecondarylevel. The major portion of the book is dividedinto two sections: The "Assessment Library"(Lion F. Gardner), includes a guide to generalreferences for those new to assessment and anannotated bibliography with a comprehensive index.The other section, compiled by Caitlin Anderson,Michael K. Smith, and Jama L. Bradley, consistsof six sections which list: (1) associations andorganizations; (2) conferences; (3) instruments; (4)Internet resources; (5) multimedia resources; and(6) technology resources. Also included is a glossaryof assessment terms and two indexes: an authorindex of works abstracted in the bibliography and akeyword index to the entire guide. (Contains 306references.)

 Catching Theory Up with Practice:Conceptual Frameworks for AssessmentBy: Astin, Ewell, Mentkowski, andMoran

An informative discussion between MarciaMentkowski, Alexander Astin, Peter T. Ewell, E.Thomas Moran, and K. Patricia Cross on howpractice connects with changes in the way wethink about epistemology, student learning, measurement,and evaluation.

 Assessment Update: The First 10YearsBy: Banta, Ewell, Gray, Pike, andSeybert

 Whether motivated by the desire to improve programsand services or by external accountabilitypressures, assessment has become extraordinarilywidespread. With some form of assessment beingundertaken at virtually every institution of highereducation, this volume is a resource to help youmove toward more effective assessment on yourcampus. This collection of columns is drawn fromten years of Assessment Update, a bimonthlynewsletter published by Jossey-Bass Publishers.The five columnists are among the top scholars/practitioners in the field.

 Proclaiming and Sustaining Excellence:Assessment as a Faculty RoleBy: Schilling and Schilling

 This report provides a brief history of the most recentwave of assessment in higher education, particularlyfocused on the faculty role in assessment.It traces major conceptual, methodological, politicaland policy advances in assessment over the pastdecade. The authors suggest some ways of thinkingabout assessment, strategies, and next steps whichthey view as necessary for more clearly envisioningassessment as a faculty role.

 First Things FirstBy: Stephen Covey

 Far from the traditional "be-more-efficient" timemanagementbook with shortcut techniques, FirstThings First shows you how to look at your use oftime totally differently. Using this book will helpyou create balance between your personal and professionalresponsibilities by putting first things firstand acting on them. Covey teaches an organizingprocess that helps you categorize tasks so you focuson what is important, not merely what is urgent.

 Learner-Centered Assessment on CollegeCampuses: Shifting the Focusfrom Teaching to LearningBy: Huba and Freed

 Learner-Centered Assessment on College Campusesintegrates current thinking and research regardingthe learning of undergraduate students with principlesof best practice in assessment and teaching. Thebook will help readers see the connection amongthree powerful trends in higher education today: thefocus on learning and learners, the emphasis on theassessment of learning, and the need to continuallyimprove what those in higher education do.

 Student-Centered Classroom Assessment(second edition)By: Richard J. Stiggins

 Provides a clear, common sense description of allassessment methods (selected response, essay, performance,and personal communication) and how toalign them with relevant achievement targets(knowledge, reasoning, skills, products, and dispositions).Easy-to-read and free of technical jargon, thisbook focuses squarely on what teachers need to knowin order to make assessment work in classrooms.

 The Course Portfolio: How Facultycan Examine Their Teaching to AdvancePractice and Improve StudentLearningBy: Pat Hutchings

 The Course Portfolio focuses on the unfolding of a singlecourse, from conception to results. The volume coversdefining features and functions, steps in development,audiences and occasions for use, and the course portfolio'splace in the development of a scholarship of teachingand learning. It also includes nine case studies by facultyin a range of disciplines who have developed andused course portfolios, as well as an annotated resourcelist.

 Electronic Portfolios: Emerging Practicesin Student, Faculty, and InstitutionalLearningBy: Barbara Cambridge

 This introduction examines the potential of electronicportfolios by addressing: rationales for creating an electronicportfolio; possible features of the portfolio; examplesof current practice; cautions; and recommendations.Chapters by nineteen portfolio practitioners from a rangeof disciplines and institutions describe the constructionand use of electronic portfolios.

Creating Learning-Centered Coursesfor the World Wide WebBy: Sanders

This book shows faculty and students how to integrategood practices in learning, design, and webpage technology. Using the web, an educator canprovide an active and interesting environment forhis or her students to incorporate as part of a traditionalclassroom, as a supplement to the classroom,or in a distance learning course. The book beginswith good practices in teaching and learning. Thenit looks for design elements that can be applied tothe web and pulls together the practice, design, andweb technology. It provides examples of activelearning, cohort learning, problem solving, andcommunication of complex information on theweb.

 The Art and Science of ClassroomAssessmentBy: Susan M. Brookhart

 Discusses the quality of individual student assessmentsin higher education courses and their compositeeffect on course grades. Reviews the literatureon making classroom assessments and their impacton the science of student assessment. Such activityrequires instructional skill, interest, and a dispositiontoward clarity and fairness. Brookhart discussessuch critical issues and suggests resources forfurther study.

 The Space Between Numbers: GettingInternational Data on Higher EducationStraightBy: Adelman

 This essay seeks to answer four questions about datawe use every day in comparing higher education inthe United States with that in other countries, particularlythe 30 advanced post-industrial democracies,including the United States, that are members of theOrganization for Economic Cooperation and Development(OECD).

 Core Indicators of Effectiveness forCommunity CollegesBy: Alfred, Ewell, and McClenney

 Today’s competitive environment requires communitycolleges to deliver increased value and measuremeaningful performance. However, many collegeslack the resources, technology, or capability requiredto produce credible data that documents both studentand institutional performance. This leaves collegesvulnerable to questions about performance on traditionalmeasures of student success. Use this resourceto find new ways to pinpoint and measure effectivenessfor completion.

 Principles of Good Practice for AssessingStudent LearningBy: American Association for HigherEducation

 The AAHE principles and comments on each, aspresented by Banta, Lund, Black, and Oblander,1996.

 Reinventing Undergraduate Education:Engaging College Students inResearch and Creative ActivitiesBy: American Association for HigherEducation

 Engaging undergraduate students in research andcreative activities has been advocated as an innovativestrategy to promote student learning in highereducation. This monograph systematically synthesizesthe literature to provide both conceptual andempirical evidence to demonstrate the effects ofsuch engagement on student learning and developmentfrom higher education.

 Community College AssessmentBy: Trudy W. Banta

 Drawing on both faculty-created and standardmeasures, such as the Community College StudentExperiences Questionnaire and the CommunityCollege Survey of Student Engagement, the authorsexplore the effectiveness of various approaches andhow they can be used to make the kind of curricularchanges that can lead to improved student- learningoutcomes.

 Portfolio Assessment: Uses, Cases,Scoring, and ImpactBy: Trudy W. Banta

 The articles in this booklet present some of the bestthinking on portfolio assessment from the leadingresearchers and practitioners in the field. Theyshow how portfolios, including web-based portfolios,have been used at various institutions to assessand improve programs in general education, themajor, and advising, as well as overall institutionaleffectiveness.

 The Hallmarks of Effective OutcomesAssessment: Assessment Update CollectionsBy: Trudy W. Banta

 This booklet brings together the best guidance andpractices that have appeared in the award-winningnewsletter Assessment Update to illustrate timetestedprinciples for all aspects of assessment fromplanning and implementing to sustaining and improvingassessment efforts over time.

 Assessing Student Achievement inGeneral Education: Assessment UpdateCollectionsBy: Trudy W. Banta

 Synopsis: Standardized tests have been cyclicallyresurrected as assessment tools and repeatedlyfound wanting. This new issue looks at the broadrange of skills; effective writing, information literacy,critical/analytical thinking, moral awareness,general communication ability, and more; desiredin college graduates and explores the difficulties indesigning successful measures of general educationlearning outcomes that satisfy all stakeholders.

 A Bird’s-Eye View of Assessment:Selections from Editor’s NotesBy: Trudy W. Banta

 Here, pioneer Trudy Banta illuminates the manyfacets of assessment in colleges and universitiesduring the past two decades. Addressing the principlesof good assessment practice, she gives aninsider?s perspective and shares the larger questionsand answers encountered in assessment. Inthe final section, she looks at assessment outsidethe United States. This valuable publication willgive you a broader, deeper appreciation of the successes,snares, and future of outcomes assessment.

 Building a Scholarship of AssessmentBy: Trudy W. Banta and Associates

 In this book, leading experts in the field examinethe current state of assessment practice and scholarship,explore what the future holds for assessment,and offer guidance to help educators meetthese new challenges. The contributors root assessmentsquarely in several related disciplines to providean overview of assessment practice and scholarshipthat will prove useful to both the seasonededucator and those new to assessment practice.Ultimately, Building a Scholarship of Assessmentwill help convince skeptics who still believeoutcomes assessment is a fad and will soon fadeaway that this is an interdisciplinary area withdeep roots and an exciting future.

 Designing Effective Assessment:Principles and Profiles of Good PracticeBy: Banta, Jones, and Black

 Trudy Banta, Elizabeth Jones, and Karen Blackoffer 49 detailed current examples of good practicein planning, implementing, and sustaining assessmentthat are practical and ready to apply in newsettings. This important resource can help educatorsput in place an effective process for determiningwhat works and which improvements will havethe most impact in improving curriculum, methodsof instruction, and student services on college anduniversity campuses.

 Thirteen Strategies to Measure CollegeTeaching: A Consumer’s Guidefor Faculty, Administrators, and Cliniciansto Rating Scale Construction,Assessment, and Decision MakingBy: Ronald A. Berk

 This book takes off from the premise that studentratings are a necessary, but not sufficient source ofevidence for measuring teaching effectiveness. It isa fun-filled--but solidly evidence-based--rompthrough more than a dozen other methods that includemeasurement by self, peers, outside experts,alumni, administrators, employers, and even aliens.

 Making Teaching and Learning Visible:Course Portfolios and the PeerReview of TeachingBy: Bernstein, Burnett, Goodburn,and Savory

 This book offers a model of peer review intended tohelp faculty document, assess, reflect on, and improveteaching and student learning through the useof a course portfolio. It features a rich collection ofmaterials—including four dozen exhibits to helpassemble a portfolio, reviewers’ comments, and reflectionsdrawn from more than 200 professors andportfolio authors in various disciplines and institutions—that faculty can use to develop their courseportfolios to be used in their peer review of teaching.

 Assessing Student Learning in GeneralEducation: Good Practice CaseStudiesBy: Marilee J. Bresciani

 This book is a compilation of good practice casestudies that are intended to assist faculty and administratorsin both two-year and four-year institutionswith the evaluation of student learning as itrelates to general education. There are severalways in which to evaluate general education, andeach case study varies in its approach.

 Case Studies for ImplementingAssessment in Student Affairs: NewDirections for Student ServicesBy: Bresciani, Gardner, and Hickmott

Thirteen case studies of successful assessment implementationin a wide range of institutes -- communitycolleges, private four-year liberal arts colleges,and public colleges and universities of varioussizes and missions -- are all in this one volume. 

 Demonstrating Student Success: APractical Guide to Outcomes-basedAssessment of Learning and Developmentin Student AffairsBy: Bresciani, Gardner, and Hickmott

 This practical guide to outcomes-based assessmentin student affairs is designed to help readers meetthe growing demand for accountability and fordemonstrating student learning. The authors offer aframework for implementing the assessment of studentlearning and development and pragmatic adviceon the strategies most appropriate for the readers’particular circumstances.

 Connecting the Dots: Developing StudentLearning Outcomes and OutcomeBased AssessmentsBy: Ronald S. Carriveau

 This book contains forms and examples and achapter on calculating, reporting and using outcomeattainment measures.

 Assessing Online LearningBy: Patricia Comeaux

 This collection offers an assortment of tools andstrategies for evaluating learning and instructionaldesign in online classrooms. Both conceptual andpractical, this book addresses the salient issues ofassessment and offers a variety of assessment toolsand strategies for online classrooms and programs,such as self-assessment tools for students to evaluatetheir progress toward their final products, instrumentsin which teams can evaluate their progress andcontributions, and specific tools and strategies forassessing students' critical thinking and writing skillsin electronic discussion boards and in similar reflectivewriting environments.

 Assessment and Review of GraduateProgramsBy: Council of Graduate Schools

 Definitive guide on the purposes, processes andpractice of graduate program review. Revised in2011, discusses graduate program review and studentlearning outcomes assessment, with brief discussionof managing data analysis to inform strategicdecisions at the university level for improving graduateeducation.

 Handbook of Qualitative AssessmentBy: Denzin and Lincoln

 Presenting the state-of-the-art for the theory andpractice of qualitative inquiry, this landmarkHandbook has been a publishing phenomenonin the human sciences since it first published in1994. As with earlier editions, the Fourth Editionis virtually a new volume. Representing thebest thinking from top scholars from around theworld, the new edition continues the book’s traditionof synthesizing an existing literature, definingthe present, and shaping the future of qualitativeresearch.

 Taking Ownership of Accreditation:Assessment Processes that PromoteInstitutional Improvement and FacultyEngagementBy: Driscoll and De Noriega

 This book demonstrates how a participatory approachto assessment and accreditation in their newforms creates a synergy for learner-centered education.It is a guide to approaching the accreditationprocess from a campus-wide perspective of ownership--illustrated by rich descriptions of how faculty,students, and administrators at California StateUniversity Monterey Bay engaged with and successfullyfocused their accreditation processes onthe improvement of their practices. The authors document strategies that are practical—ready to use or adapt—that are appropriate for all campuses. They also provide guidelines for the documentation process that accreditation demands. They demonstrate how they reduced traditional resistance to assessment by emphasizing its use for the improvement of student learning, helping faculty with their own teaching, and creating frameworks for continuing improvements that are valued by faculty. The authors emphasize the need for every institution to take into account its unique mission, vision, and core values; and to recognize the importance of individual departmental cultures. Although their accreditation "triggered" CSUMB’s engagement with assessment, the authors discuss other opportunities for jump-starting the process.

 General Education and Liberal Learning:Principles for Effective PracticeBy: Gaston, Clark, Ferren, Maki,Rhodes, Schilling, and Smith

 General Education and Liberal Learning: Principles of Effective Practice explores elements common to strong general education programs and examines how strong programs support liberal learning outcomes essential to success in the twenty-first century. The publication surveys the changes that have occurred in general education programs—and more broadly in higher education—since AAC&U's Strong Foundations: Twelve Principles for Effective General Education Programs was published in 1994. The publication discusses how institutions may improve their general education practices and provides numerous examples of successful practices. Chapters include, "Imperatives for and Drivers of Change," "Principles of Strong General Education Programs," "Intentionality," "Alignment with the Majors," "Effective Pedagogy," "Assessment," and "Institutional Commitment." This publication is ideal for use by curriculum committees and groups working on reviewing, revising, or assessing general education programs.

 Coming to Terms with Student OutcomesAssessment: Faculty and Administrators’Journeys to IntegratingAssessment in their Work and CultureBy: Peggy L. Maki

 This is a book for skeptical faculty, for those whohave been tasked to spearhead their institution’scall to create a culture of assessment; and, on campuseswhere assessment has been widely acceptedand implemented, for those who now need to ensurethis commitment will endure.

 Technology-based Assessments for21st Century Skills: Theoretical andPractical Implications from ModernResearchBy: Mayrath, Clarke-Midura, Robinson,and Schraw

Creative problem solving, collaboration, and technology fluency are core skills requisite of any nation's workforce that strives to be competitive in the 21st Century. Teaching these types of skills is an economic imperative, and assessment is a fundamental component of any pedagogical program. Yet, measurement of these skills is complex due to the interacting factors associated with higher order thinking and multifaceted communication. Advances in assessment theory, educational psychology, and technology create an opportunity to innovate new methods of measuring students' 21st Century Skills with validity, reliability, and scalability. In this book, leading scholars from multiple disciplines present their latest research on how to best measure complex knowledge, skills, and abilities using technology-based assessments. All authors discuss theoretical and practical implications from their research and outline their visions for the future of technology-based assessments.

 Student Perspectives on Assessment:What Students Can Tell Us aboutAssessment for LearningBy: McInerney, Brown, and Liem

 A volume in Research on Sociocultural Influences on Motivation and Learning Series Editor: Dennis M. McInerney, The Hong Kong Institute of Education Assessment for learning is meant to engage, motivate, and enable students to do better in their learning. However, how students themselves perceive assessments (both high-stakes qualifications and low-stakes monitoring) is not well understood. This volume collects research studies from Europe, North and South America, Asia, and New Zealand that have deliberately focused on how students in primary, secondary, and tertiary education conceive of, experience, understand, and evaluate assessments. Assessment for learning has assumed that formative assessments and classroom practices would be an unqualified success in terms of student learning outcomes. Making use of a variety of qualitatively interpreted focus groups, observations, and interviews and factor-analytic survey methods, the studies collected in this volume raise doubts as to the validity of this formulation. We commend this volume to readers hoping to stimulate their own thinking and research in the area of student assessment. We believe the chapters will challenge researchers, policy makers, teacher educators, and instructors as to how assessment for learning can be implemented.

 Assessing the Online Learner: Resourcesand Strategies for FacultyBy: Palloff and Pratt

 This hands-on resource helps higher educationprofessionals understand the fundamentals of effectiveonline assessment. It offers guidance fordesigning and implementing creative assessmentpractices tied directly to course activities to measurestudent learning. The book is filled with illustrativecase studies, authentic assessments based inreal-life application of concepts, and collaborativeactivities that assess the quality of student learningrather than relying on the traditional methods ofmeasuring the amount of information retained.

 Assessing Students in the Margin:Challenges, Strategies, andTechniquesBy: Russell and Kavanaugh

 Collectively, this volume presents a comprehensiveexamination of the several issues that presentchallenges for assessing the achievement of all students.While our understanding of how to overcomethese challenges continues to evolve, the lessons,strategies, and avenues for future researchexplored in this book empower educators, test developers,and testing programs with a deeper understandingof how we can improve assessmentsfor students in the margins.

 Beyond the Big Test: NoncognitiveAssessment in Higher EducationBy: William E. Sedlacek

William E. Sedlacek--one of the nation's leading authorities on the topic of noncognitive assessment--challenges the use of the SAT and other standardized tests as the sole assessment tool for college and university admissions. In Beyond the Big Test, Sedlacek presents a noncognitive assessment method that can be used in concert with the standardized tests. This assessment measures what students know by evaluating what they can do and how they deal with a wide range of problems in different contexts. Beyond the Big Test is filled with examples of assessment tools and illustrative case studies that clearly show how educators have used this innovative method to:

• Select a class diverse on dimensions of race, gender, and culture in a practical, legal, and ethical way
• Teach a diverse class employing techniques that reach all students
• Counsel and advise students in ways that consider their culture, race, and gender
• Award financial aid to students with potential who do not necessarily have the highest grades and test scores

Assess the readiness of an institution to educate and provide services for a diverse student body

 Assessment to Promote Deep Learning:Insight from American Associationfor Higher Education’s 2000 and1999 Assessment ConferencesBy: L Suskie

 Papers from two conferences explore efforts tomeet rising expectations for higher educationthrough fair and honest assessment.

 Assessing Student Learning: A CommonSense GuideBy: Linda Suskie

 The first edition of Assessing Student Learning hasbecome the standard reference for college facultyand administrators who are charged with the task ofassessing student learning within their institutions.The second edition of this landmark book offers thesame practical guidance and is designed to meetever-increasing demands for improvement and accountability.

 Learning, Creating, and UsingKnowledge: Concept Maps as FacilitativeTools in Schools and Corporations

This fully revised and updated edition of Learning, Creating, and Using Knowledge recognizes that the future of economic well-being in today's knowledge and information society rests upon the effectiveness of schools and corporations to empower their people to be more effective learners and knowledge creators. Novak’s pioneering theory of education presented in the first edition remains viable and useful. This new edition updates his theory for meaningful learning and autonomous knowledge building along with tools to make it operational ─ that is, concept maps, created with the use of CMapTools and the V diagram.

The theory is easy to put into practice, since it includes resources to facilitate the process, especially concept maps, now optimized by CMapTools software. CMapTools software is highly intuitive and easy to use. People who have until now been reluctant to use the new technologies in their professional lives are will find this book particularly helpful. Learning, Creating, and Using Knowledge is essential reading for educators at all levels and corporate managers who seek to enhance worker productivity.

 Making a Difference: Outcomes of aDecade of Assessment in Higher EducationBy: Trudy W. Banta and Associates

 Making a Difference presents a comprehensive accountof the best practices and lessons learned inoutcomes assessment. The book brings togetherdetailed first-person accounts by the most successfulpractitioners in the field to show how assessmentfindings have been used to improve programs,student services, and student learning.

 Classroom Assessment Techniques: AHandbook for College TeachersBy: Angelo and Cross

 This revised and greatly expanded edition of the1988 handbook offers teachers at all levels how-toadvise on classroom assessment, including: whatclassroom assessment entails and how it works;how to plan, implement, and analyze assessmentproject; twelve case studies that detail the real-lifeclassroom experiences of teachers carrying outsuccessful classroom assessment projects; fiftyclassroom assessment techniques; step-by-stepprocedures for administering the techniques; practicaladvice on how to analyze your data

 Assessment in Practice: Putting Principlesto Work on College CampusesBy: Banta, Lund, Black, and Oblander

 Assessment in Practice brings together in one volumethe best current knowledge of what assessmentmethods work best and what principlesshould be incorporated into all effective assessmentefforts—whether at institutional, program, ordepartment levels. Drawing from 165 actual cases—and reporting 86 of them in their entirety, inthe words of those who developed them—the authorsillustrate methods and techniques of assessmentcovering a wide range of objectives in diversetypes of institutions.

Academically Adrift: Limited Learningon College CampusesBy: Arum and Roksa

In spite of soaring tuition costs, more and more students go to college every year. A bachelor's degree is now required for entry into a growing number of professions. And some parents begin planning for the expense of sending their kids to college when they're born.

Almost everyone strives to go, but almost no one asks the fundamental question posed byAcademically Adrift: are undergraduates really learning anything once they get there? For a large proportion of students, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa's answer to that question is a definitive "no."

Their extensive research draws on survey responses, transcript data, and, for the first time, the state-of-the-art Collegiate Learning Assessment, a standardized test administered to students in their first semester and then again at the end of their second year. According to their analysis of more than 2,300 undergraduates at twenty-four institutions, forty-five percent of these students demonstrate no significant improvement in a range of skills - including critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing - during their first two years of college. As troubling as their findings are, Arum and Roksa argue that for many faculty and administrators they will come as no surprise - instead, they are the expected result of a student body distracted by socializing or working and an institutional culture that puts undergraduate learning close to the bottom of the priority list.

Academically Adrift holds sobering lessons for students, faculty, administrators, policy makers, and parents - all of whom are implicated in promoting or at least ignoring contemporary campus culture. Higher education faces crises on a number of fronts, but Arum and Roksa's report that colleges are failing at their most basic mission will demand the attention of us all.

Our Underachieving Colleges: A CandidLook at How Much StudentsLearn and Why They Should beLearning MoreBy: Derek Bok

Drawing on a large body of empirical evidence,former Harvard President Derek Bok examineshow much progress college students actuallymake toward widely accepted goals of undergraduateeducation. His conclusions are sobering. Althoughmost students make gains in many importantrespects, they improve much less thanthey should in such important areas as writing,critical thinking, quantitative skills, and moralreasoning. Large majorities of college seniors donot feel that they have made substantial progressin speaking a foreign language, acquiring culturaland aesthetic interests, or learning what they needto know to become active and informed citizens.Overall, despite their vastly increased resources,more powerful technology, and hundreds of newcourses, colleges cannot be confident that studentsare learning more than they did fifty years ago.

Looking further, Bok finds that many important college courses are left to the least experienced teachers and that most professors continue to teach in ways that have proven to be less effective than other available methods. In reviewing their educational programs, however, faculties typically ignore this evidence. Instead, they spend most of their time discussing what courses to require, although the lasting impact of college will almost certainly depend much more on how the courses are taught.

In his final chapter, Bok describes the changes that faculties and academic leaders can make to help students accomplish more. Without ignoring the contributions that America's colleges have made, Bok delivers a powerful critique--one that educators will ignore at their peril.

Improving Quality in American Higher Education | Learning Outcomes for the 21st Century

Improving Quality in American Higher Education addresses common concerns head-on, and offers compelling reasons why faculty should find productive ways to engage with assessment, not only in their own classrooms, but also in their departments and beyond.