This chapter explores the importance of systematic evaluation of co-curricular activities directed at graduate- and professional- school students. Approaches to assessment and benefits of sound practice are presented along with the critical role that institutional researchers can play.

Teacher training programs are increasingly being held under the microscope. Perhaps the most notable of recent calls to reform was the 2009 declaration by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan that "by almost any standard, many if not most of the nation's 1,450 schools, colleges, and departments of education are doing a mediocre job of…

New York's Cornell University spends millions of dollars and thousands of staff and volunteer hours to produce more than 1,400 events around the world each year. That's one event every six hours. Is it worth it? Do the 40,000 alumni, parents, and friends who attend feel closer to Cornell after these events? Do they disengage because Cornell didn't…

Never before in the history of the teaching profession has there been such a need for comprehensive evaluation of all teacher preparation programs, most especially professional development schools (PDSs). This need is driven not only by the pressures of the age of accountability, but also by the need for the PDS movement to act ethically and…

Charter Theatre is a small professional theatre in Washington, DC. Its mission is to develop and produce new plays. Like other organizations, Charter Theatre wants to be accountable. Its members saw early the need for evaluation--a repeatable process to assure the quality of their work, and have infused their development process with evaluation.…

Achieving the Dream colleges engage in a process of institutional improvement to increase student success. A central component of this process is engaging internal and external stakeholders to help develop and implement interventions or changes in programs and services that improve student success. To determine whether these interventions do…

The term "evaluation" emerged in the 1930's to describe a broader and somewhat more pragmatic type of inquiry than had been associated with the word "measurement." Examples suggest two main lines of development: (1) An emphasis on the specification of objectives and their attainment, and (2) an emphasis on evaluation as a cooperative process…

Junior college self-appraisal techniques should involve research and should be conducted within the academic, vocational, and adult education programs of the college. This report considers appraisal of specific areas, such as admissions, counseling and student personnel services, placement in classes, and program planning and evaluation. Sixteen…

While institutional researchers commonly evaluate the programs and services provided by their colleges, they rarely evaluate their own effectiveness with as much gusto. If Institutional Research (IR) is to serve as the bedrock of an institution's effectiveness, it must be effective in itself and continually improving. It must make certain that the…

Electronic portfolios (eportfolios) represent an assessment measure with strong potential to provide feedback about student performance to improve curricula and pedagogy, to determine individual students' mastery of learning and support feedback for improvement, and to actively involve students in the assessment process. This study examined the…

Program reviews became widely used as quality assurance activities in the United States beginning in the 1970s. Since then, they have evolved as an essential component in demonstrating institutional effectiveness to accrediting bodies. The paper discusses various approaches to reviews with a focus on a recently reengineered institutional program…

The differences between evaluation of academic units and evaluation of administrative units are discussed, and the development and implementation of a procedure for administrative unit evaluation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is described. (MSE)

The basic structure and concepts of a system for training program staff in self-evaluation are described. This training system aims to be competency-based and largely self-instructive. This paper is the first component in the training system and serves as an introduction and description of the rest of the system. (Author)

A discussion of administrative program evaluation addresses the problem and opportunity of evaluation from the perspective of the administrator or institutional researcher by suggesting criteria for deciding on the need for formal evaluation, examining several evaluation design strategies, and looking at how evaluation can enhance organizational…

The purpose of this paper is to show that for an evaluation to be a successful change effort, the evaluator must not only "preach" (simply report facts) but also "meddle" (judge quality and recommend changes). It appears that if the evaluator does not take a leadership role in pushing for modification, these modifications will…