Colleges Keep Much Assessment Activity to Themselves

When they're criticized for doing too little to measure how much and how well their students learn, colleges often complain that they don't get enough credit for the assessment activity in which they engage. A new report suggests that the institutions themselves are partially responsible for that gap. "Exploring the Landscape: What Institutional Websites Reveal About Student Learning Outcomes Assessment Activities," released by the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment, compared what campus provosts said their institutions were doing on assessment with the information about assessment that was available on the colleges' Web sites. “To the extent an institution’s website is a window into its performance, this study shows that schools need to do more to inform the public about what they are doing with regard to assessing student learning outcomes,” said George Kuh, the Indiana University professor who heads NILOA.