Discusses the relationship between student assessment and instructional improvement. Describes the development and administration of a Teaching Goals Inventory, which helps teachers clarify what they want their students to learn and helps institutions discover teaching priorities among departments and within the college as a whole. (DMM)

Describes an initiative to incorporate folktales and legends from francophone West Africa into a college-level advanced French literary and cultural studies course. Students recorded their reactions to various texts taken from France and West Africa in reading journals. Analysis of the journals shows that critical competencies in Western culture…

Data from a study of the preceptorship in family medicine, a required four-week experience for fourth-year medical students at the University of North Carolina, indicate that it was a synthesis experience. Seven functions of the preceptorship, many of which were not official program goals, are identified. (Author/JMD)

Gives descriptions of how performance assessment tasks are linked to science curriculum objectives, along with criteria for and examples of performance assessment tasks. Describes the role that computers and related technology can play in problem-based performance assessment. (LZ)

The first and last essays of 209 randomly selected students who had received a passing grade in English Composition I at Bucks County Community College during Fall, 1976, were evaluated at the end of the semester by a committee of English teachers from other institutions. The committee assessed improvement in relation to several instructional…