The assessment movement that has emerged on American college campuses over the last twenty years emphasizes the need to carefully articulate the particular outcomes colleges seek for students, and it demands that faculty and administrators provide evidence of their students' success with respect to these outcomes. It also requires that this…

This article chronicles the evolution of a large research extensive institution's General Education writing assessment efforts from an initial summative focus to a formative, improvement focus. The methods of assessment, which changed as the assessment purpose evolved, are described. As more data were collected, the measurement tool was…