Current methods for evaluating faculty teaching fall short, and one way to address this is through campus-wide initiatives that focus on change at the level of academic units. The complex context of higher education makes meaningful teaching evaluation difficult; in particular, four sobering realities of this context must be taken into account in…

According to the authors, to infuse equity truly in assessment requires that students be actively involved in the process of assessing their own learning. Equitable assessment argues that students can demonstrate attainment of learning outcomes in many ways, and in any particular instance of assessment, students can be offered multiple ways to…

In recent years, the Black Lives Matter movement, growing environmental challenges, a public health crisis, and pronounced political polarization, among other things, have shaped the normative assumptions of stakeholders about what should be measured in higher education. The recent work of the Postsecondary Value Commission, funded by the Bill…

In 2021, the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) made a monumental move to require postsecondary institutions to evaluate and document their actions to ensure fairness in admissions, an inclusive learning environment, and equitable student outcomes. Around the same time, a team comprising educational measurement experts, diversity…

Effective teaching practice focused on encouraging deep engagement helps all students learn and succeed. Considerable work by researchers and change agents, encouraged by national organizations such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Research Council, has promoted greater use of evidence-based educational practices, such as…

In its purest form, the purpose of assessment is to use evidence to give an account of and improve student learning, but assessment is rarely practiced in its purest form. For many staff and faculty in higher education, assessment is something they are asked or, more likely, required to do. The reason is because some external entity has required…

For decades, educators and policy makers have called for reform in higher education, yet now the urgency is palpable. The COVID-19 pandemic and heightened attention to systemic racism have highlighted the fact that outdated teaching practices can stunt student learning and trust of science, maintain systemic biases, and prevent equitable…

Kuh (2008) describes the capstone as a "culminating experience" students undertake close to graduation often involving "a project of some sort that integrates and applies what they've learned" (p. 11). The senior thesis is one form of the capstone in which students write an analytic paper under faculty supervision, typically as…

Despite Supreme Court cases which have upheld the 1978 Bakke ruling, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is considering challenging colleges that consider race as a factor in admissions. As colleges and universities prepare to return to the fray in response to the most recent surfacing of this issue, One might ask if everything possible is being done…

Technology's march into the college classroom continues. Generations of college and university faculty have both embraced and resisted instructional technologies such as the book, the mimeograph, the overhead projector, and hand-held calculators. Now college and university faculty are greeting the 21st century's signature…

Today's college graduates are entering an interconnected world in which globalization will affect nearly every facet of their lives. In turn, college and university mission statements increasingly include the intent to educate "global citizens" among their fundamental commitments. Yet U.S. students' global knowledge and understanding…

In this article, the author argues first, that critical-thinking skills do exist independent of disciplinary thinking skills and are not compromised by interaction effects with the major; and second, that standardized tests (e.g., the Collegiate Learning Assessment, or CLA, which is his example throughout the article) are the best way to measure…

In the latter part of the 20th century, behavioral scientists and society generally adopted a cultural belief that cognitive ability was the most significant determinant of educational and workforce outcomes. This led to efforts to raise students' test scores, the promotion of teachers who were successful in doing so, and heavy if not…

In 2010, HCM Strategists received support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to engage academic researchers in identifying and discussing the best currently available ways to account for differences in college "inputs"--students, resources, and fixed characteristics--when evaluating postsecondary outcomes. The project, Context…

Standardized testing for higher education has been much in the news in the US over the last few years. In the wake of the Spellings Commission, the clear intent of the Department of Education's (USDOE) position in negotiated rulemaking in 2007 was to mandate its use in accreditation. Standardized testing is also a central feature of the Voluntary…