In developing a model for institutional assessment, John Wood Community College (JWCC), in Quincy, Illinois, decided to use student learning as the foundation of evaluation, as opposed to the activities and services offered by the college. This performance-based approach to institutional assessment was then expanded to reshape the process by which courses and curricula were designed. The curriculum model subsequently adopted by JWCC utilized a PC-based software package for instructional revision and was based on a performance-based instructional theory developed by the Community College Education Program at Virginia Tech which divides the development of instruction into the distinct areas of planning, delivery, and evaluation. The software package leads instructors through the process of identifying course content goals, creating lesson plans by identifying teaching practices appropriate to selected learning theories, and creating exams that specifically focus on the selected content goals. Concepts underlying JWCC's computerized pedagogical model include: (1) student knowledge and skills required to exit a course are communicated in advance; (2) what is taught and learned is systematically identified, aiding assessment efforts; (3) teachers are centrally involved in instructional planning; (4) the student is the target in course construction; (5) content goals are carefully analyzed by instructors; (6) planning is carefully aligned with delivery; (7) each content goal requires approximately 3 hours of student learning time; and (8) decisions about course content form part of a data-set for describing and evaluating the instructional process. (KP)