The George Mason University (Mason) offices responsible for institutional reporting and assessment were merged to strengthen and solidify their functions and expertise. The organizational structure creating the Office of Institutional Effectiveness and Planning (OIEP) was intended to engineer a new paradigm where assessment would inform the…

This article is actually a story, a story of our experiences of transforming teacher education. In this story I (Aileen) narrate a journey that led to the development of a completely new two-year initial teacher education programme: the MSc Transformative Learning and Teaching. The story traces my first intellectual connection with the concept of…

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education has become increasingly important in the US due to its influence on the nation's educational needs, the creation of a skilled labor force, and opportunities for more tech-savvy workers. However, the evaluation approaches and methodologies used in STEM education programs have come…

Over the past decade, a growing number of institutions of higher education have added leadership studies as a formal academic program of study. In many instances, however, students have not been included as partners or stakeholders in the design and delivery of leadership education, and student motivation and retention have subsequently suffered…

This study aimed to examine the core issues and challenges with web-based distance education programs in Turkish higher education institutes. Formative research method, which is a qualitative research method in nature, was selected to analyze web-based distance education programs thoroughly. The study group comprised 4 higher education institutes,…

This article emphasizes the urgent demand for measurements of university internationalization and proposes a new approach to develop a set of internationally applicable indicators for measuring university internationalization performance. The article looks into existing instruments developed for assessing university internationalization,…

Service-Learning has evolved beyond simply asking to have students engage in community activities. Service-Learning has become an integral part of our educational system. Having the ability to judge the effectiveness of a service-learning project has become an important component in Higher Education. The purpose of this article is to provide a…

Every child is unique and learns in different ways. Some children are identified as needing special education services to support his or her learning at school. Parents can play a major role in shaping the services a child receives. This guidebook has been written for parents, guardians, and surrogate parents of a child (ages 3 to 21 or…

During the academic year 2005-2006 a Cross University Network for Formative and Shared Assessment in Higher Education was formed among 48 academics from 16 different universities within Spain and representing a range of academic areas. The Network was formed in response to the determination of a group of individuals who were dissatisfied with, or…

The National Qualifications Framework (NQF) in Mauritius was created to play two distinct roles. First, it was intended to organise qualifications across the three main sectors of the education and training system: (1) primary and secondary education; (2) technical and vocational education and training (TVET)/workplace; and (3) tertiary education.…

Even as the number of students attending college has more than doubled in the past forty years, it is still the case that nearly half of all college students in the United States will not complete their degree within six years. It is clear that much remains to be done toward improving student success. For more than twenty years, Vincent Tinto's…

Participation in accreditation processes, on visiting teams as well as through institutional self-study, is an excellent opportunity for individual academics to augment their professional expertise in a range of higher education issues: strategic planning and assessment, resource management and capital investments, curriculum planning and program…

Academic program life cycle concept states each program's life flows through several stages: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. A mixed-influence diffusion growth model is fitted to enrolment data on academic programs to analyze the factors determining progress of academic programs through their life cycles. The regression analysis yield…

The use of data for making educational decisions and to assess educational outcomes has been legislated by political bodies and codified by accreditation. Faculty have always used data to inform the grading process--data is gathered throughout the term to inform the letter grade assigned at the end. However, in today's educational environment,…

We present some key findings of a four-year, two-phase writing assessment project at Central Michigan University: Phase One (2002), a survey of faculty members (n=115) and subsequent focus groups (n=14) and Phase Two (2005), an evaluation of two samples of student writing (n=635 and 632). Major findings of Phase One reported here include the…