National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA). Website includes examples of good assessment practice, papers and presentations, links to featured institutions and websites, tools for surveys and benchmarking, and a monthly newsletter.

Search the massive Internet Resources for Higher Education Outcomes Assessment sponsored by North Carolina State University (http://www2.acs.ncsu.edu/UPA/assmt/resource.htm). Among its hundreds of links are assessment "handbooks," institutional assessment websites, and information on assessment of specific disciplines and skills. (annotation from MSCHE Newsletter, Spring 2008).

The International Assessment and Retention Conference, sponsored by the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA), is held each June and focuses in integrating assessment and retention in academic and student affairs. For more information, visit http://www.naspa.org/assessment/index.cfm.

NCSU Assessment Links & Resources (http://www.ncsu.edu/assessment/links.htm). An exhaustive list of links to assessment related information including nuts and bolts, first year and general education assessment, as well as discipline-specific assessment resources.

University of Hawaii Assessment Homepage This is an additional resource to assessment coordinators, with guides on how to develop program learning outcomes, create rubrics, and perform other assessment tasks.

Assessment Resources from Other Universities:

Clemson University

Illinois State University

Indiana State University

Miami University

Seminal Readings on Assessing Student Learning

Angelo, T. A., & Cross, K. P. (1993). Classroom assessment techniques: A handbook for college teachers (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Banta, T. W., Jones, E. A., & Black, K. E. (2009). Designing effective assessment: Principles and profiles of good practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Barr, R. B., & Tagg, J. (1995). From teaching to learning - A new paradigm for undergraduate education. Change, 27(6), 12-25.

Boyer, E. L. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Bresciani, M. J. (2006). Outcomes-based academic and co-curricular program review: A compilation of institutional good practices. Sterling, VA: Stylus.

Bresciani, M. J. (Ed.) (2007). Assessing student learning in general education: A compilation of good practice case studies. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Anker Series.

Huba, M. E., & Freed, J. E. (2000). Learner-centered assessment on college campuses: Shifting the focus from teaching to learning. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Middle States Commission on Higher Education. (2003). Student learning assessment: Options and resources. Philadelphia: Author.

Shulman, L. S. (2007). Counting and recounting: Assessment and the quest for accountability. Change, 39(1), 28-35.

Suskie, L. (2009). Assessing student learning: A common sense guide (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Suskie, L. (2000, May). Fair assessment practices: Giving students equitable opportunities to demonstrate learning. AAHE Bulletin, 52(9), 7-9.

Walvoord, B. E. (2004). Assessment clear and simple: A practical guide for institutions, departments, and general education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Walvoord, B., & Anderson, V. J. (2009). Effective grading: A tool for learning and assessment (2nd ed.) San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Compiled by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education on December 6, 2010

Join the ASSESS listserv. This is a fairly low-traffic but useful unmediated listserv in which higher education assessment practitioners share ideas on the nuts and bolts of assessment. To join or search the archives, visit http://lsv.uky.edu/archives/assess.html.

Assessment Conferences (from MSCHE Newsletter, Spring 2008)

• The Middle States Annual Conference, held each December, always features presentations and poster sessions on assessment. For more information, visit http://www.msche.org and click on Events.
• The Assessment Institute in Indianapolis, held in late October or early November, is the country's largest conference devoted solely to assessment in higher education. For more information, visit http://planning.iupui.edu/conferences/national/nationalconf.html.
• The Association for Instiutional Research Annual Forum, held each May, devotes a track to assessment. For more information, visit http://www.airweb.org
• The National Conference on First Year Assessment, sponsored by the National Center on the First Year of College and Students in Transition, offers models and best practices that can often be applied beyond the first college year. For more information, visit http://www.sc.edu/fye and click on Events.
• The North Carolina State Undergraduate Assessment Symposium (http://www.ncsu.edu/assessment/symposium) and the Texas A&M Assessment Conference (http://assessment.tamu.edu/conference) each attracts several hundred people from across the country. Their smaller size makes them ideal for networking.

Middle States Self Study Process Underway

WCU has entered its self-study year of the decennial Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) reaccreditation process. A steering committee was formed in 2008-2009, chaired by Dr. Darla Spence Coffey, Associate Provost and Dr. Anne Herzog, Chair of the English Department. It comprises the chairs of the nine working groups, each of which is tasked to evaluate and draft a report focused on one or more of the 14 MSCHE Standards. All of the groups are actively meeting and working toward the goal of submitting final reports to the steering committee by mid-May 2010.

Information Literacy

The Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) now requires that information literacy be included as a student learning outcome in all programs - and that it be assessed annually. Information literacy "is the array of knowledge and skills necessary to identify the information needed for a task and then to locate, understand, evaluate, and use that information efficiently and effectively within appropriate ethical and legal limits" (quoted from the WCU Library web page devoted to this subject; more information can be obtained at http://subjectguides.wcupa.edu/InformationLiteracy).

Voluntary System of Accountability

The Voluntary System of Accountability (VSA) was designed to promote transparency and public accountability of universities and to allow them to affirm the success of their missions, primarily by providing a means to report various measures of student learning and student perceptions through the College Portrait web portal. Participating institutions must also select one of three assessment instruments considered capable of showing improvement in learning ("value-added") in the areas of critical thinking, analytical reasoning, and written communication - cognitive skills that are multidisciplinary and integrated throughout the university curricula. Focus is on institution-level learning, and the scores of the assessments are meant to provide consumers (notably prospective students and their parents) a way to compare institutions.

The VSA assessment employs a cross-section comparison of two different cohorts (traditional first year students and traditional seniors) to discern scores that reflect learning gains (value-added) between first-years and seniors as well as the actual average test scores for both cohorts. Scoring is based on mean SAT/ACT scores. Three instruments have been approved by the VSA for use. WCU chose the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA). In 2009-2010 WCU is administering this test for the first time, as a pilot, targeting 100 first year students in the fall and 100 senior students in the spring. The fall administration has been completed, and the process of planning the spring administration is underway, as is planning the structure for CLA administration for next year using the lessons learned from the current year.

Humanities' Role in Assessment

Humanities' Role in Assessment: See HigherEd.com article, "Meanings and Metrics": "It's time for humanists to move beyond a Luddite approach on student learning, for strategic and educational reasons," David Scobey argues. full story...