General Education Resources

Assessment

Project Partners with Accreditors on Assessment and Student Achievement
Greater Expectations: Project on Accreditation and Assessment, Newsletter #3

Assessing Diversity Courses
This article by Jack Meacham underscores the importance of tying assessment of diversity courses to the learning goals of the course. In three pages it offers a wide variety of practical assessment methods that could be immediately adapted to evaluate a diversity course.

The Comprehensive Assessment Program
King's College in Pennsylvania provides components of its nationally recognized Comprehensive Assessment Program that occurs within the Core Curriculum and at critical junctures in the major in order to ensure that students are combining learning in the major with learning in the Core Curriculum.

Embedded Assessment of Student Learning in General Education
In 1998, San Jose State University implemented new General Education Guidelines based on course-embedded assessment. This PowerPoint presentation (99KB) from AAC&U's 2004 General Education and Assessment meeting reflects five years of experience with this model.

The Status of General Education in the Year 2000: Summary of a National Survey
The Status of General Education in the Year 2000 summarizes the results of an extensive survey of undergraduate general education in a sample of AAC&U-member colleges and universities, which was conducted by staff at AAC&U and at the Center for the Study of Higher Education at The Pennsylvania State University. It provides a snapshot of general education practice at the turn-of-the-century, information about significant changes in the past decade, and insight about the challenges of the future. The print publication is available for purchase on AAC&U's web site.

Student Assessment-as-Learning
Faculty members at Alverno College have developed the concept of assessment-as-learning, a multidimensional process consisting of course-based assessments and integrative assessments that focus on student learning from several courses, in order to elicit samples of performance representing the expected learning outcomes from a course or program. Faculty and other trained assessors offer diagnostic feedback that, in addition to student's self assessment, creates a continuous process that improves learning and integrates it with assessment.

Student Electronic Portfolios to Assess Liberal Learning Across the Curriculum
This site provides information about ePort, an IUPUI electronic portfolio package intended to provide students with a resource that will enable them to track their intellectual growth throughout their college career and to prepare customized resumes for future employers or graduate school committees. The portfolio also provides faculty, department chairs, and campus level administrators information about student learning that will help them make curricular, pedagogical, and resource decisions.

AAC&U offers these resources only as possible models of interest and has not submitted each of them to any substantial peer or quality review. If you have questions about any particular resource, please contact the institution sponsoring it directly.