Institutional Effectiveness
Assessment

The overall purpose of assessment is not to focus on an individual student. Rather, the emphasis is on what and how a course, a program, a unit and the institution as a whole are contributing to the learning of students as a group.

There are three levels of assessment

  1. Institutional Level
  2. Program or Administrative Level
  3. Course Level

The Institutional Effectiveness Department works with faculty and staff in developing, implementing, and monitoring assessment plans at all levels of the institution.

For further information regarding AUD's Assessment Plan, kindly contact the Director of Institutional Effectiveness.

Nine Principles of Good Practice for Assessing Student Learning

  • The assessment of student learning begins with educational values.

  • Assessment is most effective when it reflects an understanding of learning as multidimensional, integrated, and revealed in performance over time.

  • Assessment works best when the programs it seeks to improve have clear, explicitly stated purposes.

  • Learning AssessmentAssessment requires attention to outcomes but also and equally to the experiences that lead to those outcomes.

  • Assessment works best when it is ongoing not episodic.

  • Assessment fosters wider improvement when representatives from across the educational community are involved.

  • Assessment makes a difference when it begins with issues of use and illuminates questions that people really care about.

  • Assessment is most likely to lead to improvement when it is part of a larger set of conditions that promote change.

  • Through assessment, educators meet responsibilities to students and to the public.

Authors: Alexander W. Astin; Trudy W. Banta; K. Patricia Cross; Elaine El-Khawas; Peter T. Ewell; Pat Hutchings; Theodore J. Marchese; Kay M. McClenney; Marcia Mentkowski; Margaret A. Miller; E. Thomas Moran; Barbara D. Wright.

These principles were developed under the auspices of the American Association for Higher Education AAHE (now dissolved) Assessment Forum with support from the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education with additional support for publication and dissemination from the Exxon Education Foundation (December 1992).
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