At the University of Hawai'i at Manoa (UH Manoa), the journey toward Culturally responsive and Equity-minded Assessment (CEA) has been grounded in a guiding belief: that lasting change is driven by both structural supports and leaders of change. CEA practice requires faculty and staff to be very thoughtful, intentional, and critical in the…

This issue of "Assessment Update" presents a three part series on fixing assessments. Assessment means different things, but it almost always includes accreditation reporting. In Part 1: David Eubanks describes what went wrong with the accreditation standards on learning assessment and the compliance culture that they created. This…

This issue of "Assessment Update" presents a three part series on fixing assessments. In Part 1, David Eubanks advocates for a collaborative model of assessment as the field enters a fourth decade of low return on investment. In Part 2, Megan R. Good laments the opportunity cost of continuing the define-measure-improve assessment model…

This issue of "Assessment Update" presents a three part series on fixing assessments. In Part 1: "Assessment Standards are Broken," David Eubanks highlights the challenges with the assessment standards articulated by institutional accreditors. In this article, Part 2: Megan R. Good, discusses the opportunity costs faced and…

Equity-minded assessment refers to a set of practices that collectively serve to understand, prioritize, and optimize the learning experiences and outcomes of student learners, particularly students from communities who have been historically marginalized or underserved in higher education. The scholarship on equity-minded assessment (Montenegro…

This issue of "Assessment Update" presents the following articles: (1) Organizing for Learning Improvement: What It Takes (Andrea M. Pope and Keston H. Fulcher); (2) Editor's Notes: The Leadership Imperatives for Assessment Excellence -- Imperative #2, Attracting and Retaining Talent to Support Assessment Excellence (Stephen P. Hundley);…

This issue of "Assessment Update" presents the following articles: (1) Lessons Learned: Graduate Student Assessment (Michael Cherry and Lesley Page); (2) Assessing the Assessor: A Response to Fulcher and Bashkov's "Do We Practice What We Preach? The Accountability of an Assessment Office" (Christine Robinson, John G. M.…

Many people know the myth of Sisyphus, the ancient king who committed an offense against the gods and was condemned for an eternity to roll a boulder unsuccessfully to the top of a steep hill. Each time he reached the summit, the boulder, of its own weight, would roll back to the bottom, whereupon Sisyphus would have to begin laboriously rolling…

Scores of colleges and universities have pledged to promote lifelong learning in their most central document, the mission statement. Moreover, "A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of Higher Education," the report from the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education (2006), stresses the importance of lifelong…

Recently the Educational Testing Service (ETS) has modified its Student Instructional Report II (SIR II) for use in online distance education courses. The SIR II is a second-generation survey based on more than thirty years of experience with student evaluations (Centra, 1998; Centra and Gaubatz, n.d.). The e-SIR II is based on the highly…

Mississippi State University is participating in a pilot test of the Beginning College Student Survey (BCSS), the newest addition to the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). The BCSS is designed to provide information about students' experiences in high school and expectations for college and parallels NSSE's premier survey of college…

Student engagement measures make valuable contributions to an institution's assessment program. Combined with other relevant information, such data help to tie together what students and institutions do, student outcomes, and other indicators of institutional performance. The results can be used in a variety of ways, from comparing student…