While traditional assessment models effectively evaluate student learning objectives within the classroom, they often fail to capture the extent to which students practice civic engagement, critical inquiry, and global citizenship following graduation. As educators, we often do not know whether students employ these concepts and embrace these…

Higher education institutions are increasingly seeking ways to leverage the available educational data to make program and course quality improvements. The development of automated curriculum analytics can play a substantial role in this effort by bringing novel and timely insights into course and program quality. However, the adoption of…

The 2017 Supreme Court ruling in "Endrew vs. Douglas County" charged educators to provide evidence toward the attainment of Individual Education Plan (IEP) goals beyond "de minimus" educational benefit. The purpose of this article is to present two methods that may be useful for supporting IEP teams in evaluating progress…

High quality student outcome measures provide the foundation for effective learning assessment. These outcomes can be organized into different categories, such as skills or habits of mind, and evidence types, such as direct or indirect. Prevailing models of assessment, however, focus only on the distinction between direct and indirect evidence…

Effective assessments guide student learning, refine teaching practices, ensure curriculum alignment, and foster workforce readiness. However, the emergence of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools, such as ChatGPT, has significantly disrupted traditional assessment processes, raising concerns about academic integrity and necessitating…

The first part of this article describes in brief the Six Steps methodology for designing educational environments--be they K-12 schools, tertiary institutions, community centers, youth movements, or the like-- as set forth in my book "Educational Design in Six Steps: A Strategic and Practical Scaffold" (Routledge 2020). The second part…

The dominant narrative for assessment design seems to reflect a strong, albeit largely implicit undercurrent of purpose purism, which idealizes the principle that assessment design should be driven by a single assessment purpose. With a particular focus on achievement assessments, the present article questions the tenability of purpose purism,…

We created a faculty-centric model to serve as a catalyst for faculty engagement that resulted in improved teaching and learning. We aligned the goals and objectives to improve teaching with faculty-centric guiding principles, creating policies and practices that are in the best interest of the faculty. Simple but effective philosophical guiding…

A Vygotskian approach to assessment is proposed by invoking the distinction between the development of lower and higher psychological functions. Higher psychological functions are specifically human and develop with the use of cultural tools via mediation. Accordingly, a distinction is made between tests that are based on association, which have…

As colleges educate a more diverse and global student population, there is increased need to ensure every student succeeds regardless of their differences. This paper explores the relationship between equity and assessment, addressing the question: how consequential can assessment be to learning when assessment approaches may not be inclusive of…

The Every Student Succeeds Act grants states more authority over their accountability systems than did No Child Left Behind, but have they seized the opportunity to develop school ratings that are clearer and fairer than those in the past? This new analysis examines the plans submitted by all fifty states and the District of Columbia, and whether…

Experiential learning is an effective educational tool across many academic disciplines, including career development. Nine different institutions bridged by the National Institutes of Health Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training Consortium compared their experiments in rethinking and expanding training of predoctoral graduate students and…

This research study examines the pedagogical considerations and linguistic challenges regarding teaching Portuguese to speakers of Spanish. That the Portuguese language is similar to Spanish presents a unique set of advantages and challenges to students and instructors. The study of this population of students has grown considerably since the…

This memo, which is the second in the series, highlights the work of the New Hampshire Learning Initiative (NHLI), a member of the ALP network. The memo describes their efforts to support educators across the state to actively engage students as partners in co-designing learning goals and assessment strategies, showcasing how these efforts have…

Over the past decade, there has been a movement toward increased accountability, focusing on teacher performance, in U.S. education. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss student learning objectives (SLOs) as one component of high-stakes teacher evaluation systems, within the context of learners with special needs. We describe SLOs and their…