Assessment of student learning within a degree program is an important but challenging endeavor. One goal of a programmatic assessment is to systematically collect evidence for chemistry majors' knowledge and understanding and to use the results to improve curriculum and instruction. Recently, the chemistry department at the United States Naval…

Assurance of learning assessment results are used as a basis for curriculum changes at Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business-accredited institutions. Because budget constraints and opportunity costs impact all schools, assessment quality is critical. This research uses a longitudinal, business school case study to highlight bias…

Accrediting organizations in higher education have shifted emphasis from indirect measures such as student course evaluations, focus-group interviews, and employer surveys to direct measurement of student performance using appropriate assessment instruments. In response, we developed a spreadsheet tool for reports and analysis of test assessments…

Standards for accreditation by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business emphasize the assessment of student learning as an avenue to continuously improve business school curricula. The study reported here, which took place in an Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business-accredited business school in a mid-sized…

Although most higher education programs include a capstone course to culminate the student experience, program directors disagree on what the experience should look like. Updating previous research, this study examined the main goals, teaching methods, and subject areas covered in journalism and mass communication capstone courses. It also…

The United States is in a period of reckoning from which institutions of higher education are not exempt. Rather, we exist at the intersection of the chaos wrought by the novel coronavirus and the spread of outrage about systemic racism beyond Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPoC) communities. The resulting almost universal sense of loss…

James Madison University has used dedicated Assessment Days for more than 30 years to collect longitudinal data on student learning outcomes. Our model ensures all incoming students are tested twice: once before beginning classes and again after accumulating 45-70 credit hours. Although each student completes only four instruments during a 2-hour…

Higher education institutions are commonly tasked with demonstrating student learning in and out of the classroom. Although academic and student affairs share a common goal of supporting student success, they frequently do not speak the same assessment language. This lack of alignment can lead to miscommunication and missed opportunities to…

Entering into a new decade with an even more diversified college student population will not only require more assessment models involving students but also deeper professional development of institutional representatives key to student learning. Reflecting upon the conversations over the last three years around culturally responsive assessment…

Evaluation of student learning is of paramount importance to the educational community and allows reflection on program successes and weaknesses; however, best practices are hotly debated. This project designed and implemented an assessment system in which an identical, mixed-format assessment was given to all levels of students in the Georgia…

Student learning outcomes (SLO) assessment is often perceived as a burdensome, top-down process driven by institutional requirements. Recent research has thus called for discipline-specific models of SLO assessment to more deeply engage postsecondary faculty in determining what constitutes student learning within their programs. In response, this…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present a public university's design and implementation of an assessment approach that measures the change in undergraduate students' environmental stewardship reasoning and knowledge abilities over time. Design/methodology/approach: In support of a university's strategic emphasis on environmental…

This paper explores a method to support instructors in assessing cognitive skills in their course, designed to enable aggregation of data across an institution. A rubric authoring tool, "BASICS" (Building Assessment Scaffolds for Intellectual Cognitive Skills) was built as part of the Queen's University Learning Outcomes Assessment (LOA)…

The Data Beast, a manifestation of the expansion of assessment activity by the University of Tennessee (UTC) at Chattanooga and its accrediting body; with no meaningful quantitative information on student progress in its undergraduate program. Any formal assessment that took place was done because someone outside the department had demanded it,…

This study analyzes a sample of students' writing to assess their understanding of marketing concepts in the context of a Principles of Marketing course. Content analysis of pre- and post-essays was used to assess student knowledge of marketing concepts. The data was collected in Principles of Marketing classes. and highlight that many students…