VALUE: Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education

Overview

With support from the State Farm Companies Foundation, AAC&U is conducting a research and campus-based initiative designed to make the essential learning outcomes central to the educational experience.  We are working with key researchers, educational leaders, campus presidents, other administrative leaders, and faculty members to define, strengthen, document, and assess student achievement of the essential learning outcomes recommended by the Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) National Leadership Council.

The project will generate leadership, recommendations, examples of best practices and curricular designs, and an assessment framework, all designed to build campus capacity to:

• articulate the aims and importance of the essential learning outcomes;
• intentionally foster their achievement across the curriculum; and
• use cumulative assessments, especially e-portfolios, to both measure student progress and improve practices for achieving these outcomes.

Project Activities

In the initial phase of the VALUE project, AAC&U will:

1. Form an advisory board, including key researchers, members of the National Leadership Council, and campus leaders to examine the available research and evidence on student achievement of key learning outcomes and identify the best practices currently utilized on campuses to achieve and measure student progress;
2. Conduct, in concert with the advisory committee, a campus audit focused on the essential learning outcomes to identify best practices in achieving and assessing these outcomes in the context of the required college curriculum, including models for e-portfolios and rubrics for ascending levels of accomplishment (basic, proficient, advanced, etc.);
3. Create, in dialogue with both campuses and the advisory committee, a proposed framework and guide for defining and assessing essential learning outcomes that can be applied to diverse institutions and adapted to a variety of academic and professional fields.

VALUE is AAC&U's effort as part of the larger project Rising to the Challenge which establishes a consortium between AAC&U and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) and the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC) to collectively build campus leadership and capacity to implement meaningful student learning assessment approaches and use assessment results to improve levels of student achievement.

More information about the project is also available from the press release.