This book offers colleges and universities a framework and tools to design an effective and collaborative assessment process appropriate for their culture and institution. It encapsulates the approach that Peggy Maki has developed and refined through the hundreds of successful workshops she has presented nationally and internationally. Maki starts with a definition of assessment as a process that enables us to determine the fit between what we expect our students to understand and be able to do and what they actually demonstrate at points along their educational careers. She then presents a framework--accompanied by extensive examples of processes, strategies and illustrative campus practices, as well as key resources, guides, worksheets, and exercises--that will assist all stakeholders in the institution to develop and sustain assessment of student learning as an integral and systematic core institutional process. Exploring the continuum of students' learning, this book sets the assessment of learning within the twin contexts of: (1) the level of a program, department, division, or school within an institution; and (2) the level of an institution, based on its mission statement, educational philosophy, and educational objectives. Each chapter explores ways to position assessment within program- and institutional-level processes, decisions, structures, practices, and channels of communication. This book presents inquiry into student learning as a core process of institutional learning--a way of knowing about our work--to improve educational practices. Becoming learning organizations themselves, higher education institutions deepen understanding of their educational effectiveness by examining the various ways in which students make their learning visible. Here is a process that any campus can adapt and use to engage all its constituencies--institutional leaders, faculty, staff, administrators, students and everyone involved in governance--in constructive dialogue to forge a vision about and commitment to a culture of evidence. Following an Introduction, this book is divided into the following five parts and chapters. Part I: Developing A Collective Institutional Commitment: A Culture of Inquiry, contains the following chapters: (1) Dialogue about Teaching and Learning across the Institution; (2) Anatomy of the Collaborative Process; (3) A Shared Commitment: Roles and Responsibilities; (4) A Collaborative Beginning: Principles of Commitment; (5) Anchors for Developing Institutional Principles of Commitment; (6) Meaningful Beginnings; and (7) Higher Education's Ownership. Part II: Beginning with Dialogue about Teaching and Learning: The Continuum of Learning, contains the following chapters: (8) Beyond an Aggregation of Courses, Credits, and Seat Time; (9) A Focus on Integration; Coordinating Committees; (10) Dialogue Focused on Expectations for Learning; (11) Dialogue Focused on Verifying Expectations; (12) Maps and Inventories; and (13) The Design of Our Work. Meta-sites for Active Learning and Teaching and Learning Inventories is appended. Part III: Making Claims about Student Learing within Contexts for Learning: Learning Outcome Statements, contains: (14) Levels of Learning Outcome Statements; (15) Collaboration to Develop and Review Outcome Statements; (16) Strategies for Developing Outcome Statements; and (17) Situating Students to Take Responsibility. Example of Leveled Outcome Statements are appended. Part IV: Identifying or Designing Tasks to Assess the Dimensions of Learning: The Range of Texts That Demonstrate or Represent Learning, contains the following chapters: (18) Multiple Methods of Assessment; (19) Direct and Indirect Methods of Assessment; (20) Methods along the Continuum of Learning: Formative and Summative; (21) Positions of Inquiry; (22) Issues of Alignment; (23) Properties of a Method: Validity and Reliability; and (24) An Inventory of Direct and Indirect Assessment Methods. Strategies for Reviewing and Selecting Standardized Instruments is appended. Part V: Reaching Consensus about Criteria and Standards of Judgment: Interpretation of Student Achievement, contains: (25) Scoring Rubrics; (26)Strategies to Develop Scoring Rubrics; (27) Strategies to Assure Inter-relater Reliability; (28) Threaded Opportunities for Institutional and Student Learning. Sample Scoring Rubrics are appended. Part VI: Designing a Cycle of Inquiry: A Design for Institutional Learning, contains: (29) Methods of Sampling; (30) Times and Contexts for Collecting Evidence; (31) Scoring; (32) Analysis and Presentation of Results; (33) Collective Interpretation of Analyzed Results; (34) A Narrated Cycle; and (35) Beyond a Cycle. Part VII: Building a Core Institutional Process of Inquiry over Time: A View of the Whole, contains the final chapters: (36) Some Representative Structures, Processes, Decisions, and Channels and Forms of Communication; (7) Resources and Support: Human, Financial, Technological; Campus Practices that Manifest an Institutional Commitment; and (38) Signs of Maturation.