Learning Assessment

SHEEO and AAC&U to Share Best Practices From Assessment Initiatives

• By Rhea Kelly
• 03/24/16

A free webinar series hosted by the State Higher Education Executive Officers association (SHEEO), the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and Taskstream will highlight lessons learned from two initiatives focused on student learning assessment in higher education.

The AAC&U VALUE (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education) initiative provides rubrics to "assess students' own authentic work, produced across their diverse learning progressions and institutions, to determine whether and how well students are meeting graduation level achievement in learning outcomes that both employers and faculty consider essential," according to the organization. Similarly, the Multi-State Collaborative to Advance Learning Outcomes Assessment (MSC) is a SHEEO initiative "designed to provide meaningful evidence about how well students are achieving important learning outcomes," using common rubrics that allow for benchmarking across institutions and states.

Starting today at 2 p.m. EDT with a presentation on "Assessment for Improvement: the Multi-State Collaborative to Advance Learning Outcomes Assessment/VALUE Initiative," the series of six webinars "will provide an inside look into the background, process, resources and initial findings" from the VALUE and MSC initiatives, as well as cover topics such as "faculty engagement, identifying assignments and collecting student artifacts, and the analysis and use of assessment data for accreditation and to inform changes to improve student learning."

"We learned a lot from the pilot year of the project that can help change the way we view the assessment of student learning in higher education," said Julie Carnahan, vice president at SHEEO, in a press release. "We continue to grow this work by adding new states and institutions, but we're also excited to share some of our takeaways with the greater education community through this webinar series."

"At AAC&U we are thrilled by the success we saw during the pilot year, demonstrating that this process for direct assessment of learning outcomes with the VALUE rubrics can be taken to scale," commented Terrel Rhodes, vice president at AAC&U and executive director of VALUE. "Perhaps more importantly, we have been impressed by the stories from the practitioners on the participating campuses and the insights and lessons they are applying at their own institutions. We see these webinars as a great vehicle for spreading these practices locally, within states and nationwide whether an institution is participating in the MSC or not."

Registration for today's webinar is available on the Taskstream site. The next webinar in the series, "Engaging Faculty in Meaningful Assessment: Leveraging the MSC/VALUE Initiative to Make Local Strides," will take place Tuesday, April 5 at 2 p.m. EDT.