Assessing for Learning : Building a Sustainable Commitment Across the Institution

This book offers colleges and universities a framework and tools to design an effective and collaborative assessment process appropriate for their culture and institution. It encapsulates the approach that Peggy Maki has developed and refined through the hundreds of successful workshops she has presented nationally and internationally.

Maki starts with a definition of assessment as a process that enables us to determine the fit between what we expect our students to understand and be able to do and what they actually demonstrate at points along their educational careers.

She then presents a framework--accompanied by extensive examples of processes, strategies and illustrative campus practices, as well as key resources, guides, worksheets, and exercises--that will assist all stakeholders in the institution to develop and sustain assessment of student learning as an integral and systematic core institutional process.

Exploring the continuum of students' learning, this book sets the assessment of learning within the twin 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 mission statement, educational philosophy, and educational objectives. Each chapter explores ways to position assessment within program- and institutional-level processes, decisions, structures, practices, and channels of communication.

This book presents inquiry into student learning as a core process of institutional learning--a way of knowing about our work--to improve educational practices. Becoming learning organizations themselves, higher education institutions deepen understanding of their educational effectiveness by examining the various ways in which students make their learning visible.

Here is a process that any campus can adapt and use to engage all its constituencies--institutional leaders, faculty, staff, administrators, students and everyone involved in governance--in constructive dialogue to forge a vision about and commitment to a culture of evidence.

Peggy L. Maki is a higher education consultant who specializes in assisting undergraduate and graduate colleges and universities, higher education boards, higher education organizations, and disciplinary organizations integrate assessment of student learning into educational practices, processes and structures. Her work also focuses on assessment within the context of accreditors' expectations for institutional effectiveness. She has served as member of the Board of Contributors of About Campus as well as its Department Editor for Assessment for. She has been a national board member of AAC&U’s VALUE Project (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education) and serves annually as a faculty member in AAC& U's national Institutes on General Education and Assessment and Assessment in Engaged Departments; has served as a faculty member in the Carnegie Foundation's Integrated Learning Project; and teaches graduate-level seminars focused on assessment. Currently, she also serves as sole consultant to the Rhode Island Board of Governors for Higher Education.