Holistic assessment is an evaluative approach in which assessors work backwards from an overall appraisal of work to determine the criteria relevant to individual student responses. One of the strongest proponents of this approach in higher education is Royce Sadler, whose theoretical contributions over recent decades provide a strong conceptual…

In graduate education, there is often a great divide between classroom learning and research endeavors. Using learning community (LC) values and strategies, our goal is to build stronger and more meaningful ties between these two aspects of graduate education so that students see them as complimentary learning rather than separate components. This…