Because faculty members' thinking is immersed in the discipline(s) they teach, it often makes good sense to begin an assessment initiative at a college or university by focusing on student learning in the discipline, or academic major. This new issue illustrates how assessment initiatives focused in that fashion can be the starting point of a successful institutional assessment program.

Methods range from faculty-developed comprehensive exams to computer simulations, from patient-actors to electronic portfolios. Disciplines represented include political science, psychology, sociology,...

Standardized tests have been cyclically resurrected as assessment tools and repeatedly found wanting. This new issue looks at the broad range of skills; effective writing, information literacy, critical/analytical thinking, moral awareness, general communication ability, and more; desired in college graduates and explores the difficulties in designing successful measures of general education learning outcomes that satisfy all stakeholders.

Click here to view all five installments of Trudy Banta's Assessment Update Collections.

Here, pioneer Trudy Banta illuminates the many facets of assessment in colleges and universities during the past two decades. Addressing the principles of good assessment practice, she gives an insider's perspective and shares the larger questions and answers encountered in assessment. In the final section, she looks at assessment outside the United States. This valuable publication will give you a broader, deeper appreciation of the successes, snares, and future of outcomes assessment.