VALUE: Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education

Project Description

As institutions are asked to document the quality of student learning and to raise retention and graduation rates, the VALUE project began to define, document, assess, and strengthen student achievement of the essential learning outcomes in undergraduate education.  Recognizing that there are no standardized tests for many of the essential outcomes of an undergraduate education, the VALUE project developed ways for students and institutions to collect convincing evidence of student learning

• drawn primarily from the work students complete through their required curriculum and co-curriculum,
• assessed by well-developed campus rubrics and judgments of selected experts, and
• organized in electronic portfolios (e-portfolios) that can be organized and presented in ways appropriate for different audiences.

The e-portfolio is an ideal format for collecting evidence of student learning, especially for those outcomes not amenable nor appropriate for standardized measurement.  Additionally, e-portfolios can facilitate student reflection upon and engagement with their own learning across multi-year degree programs, across different institutions, and across diverse learning styles  while helping students to set and achieve personal learning goals. E-portfolios provide both a transparent and portable medium for showcasing the broad range of complex ways students are asked to demonstrate their knowledge and abilities for purposes such as graduate school and job applications as well as to benchmark achievement among peer institutions. 

AAC&U staff, the advisory board and selected teams of faculty and other academic professionals assembled a collection of extant rubrics for ascending levels of accomplishment. Investigating the range of outcomes and the criteria considered critical for assessing student achievement of each outcome uncovered that there were similarities among campuses. By identifying outcomes in terms of expectations for demonstrated student learning among disparate campuses, a valuable basis for comparing levels of learning through the curriculum emerged. This is especially useful as students, parents, employers and policy makers seek valid representations of student academic accomplishment.

Supported by grants from The State Farm Companies Foundation and the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, the formal project ran from May 2007 through April 2010.