Advising with a Strong Assessment Component Helps Students Achieve their Educational Goals

Abstract

Advising is a form of teaching that is inherently student centered and works well with a facilitated learning approach. Traditional methods for educational evaluation, such as Ralph W. Tyler's goal-based evaluation, Michael Scriven's goal-free evaluation, and Robert Stake's responsive evaluation, can be employed to determine how well students are achieving their goals. Formative and summative evaluations relying on ongoing communication and campus-wide collaboration are essential components of educational evaluation in advising. This article presents guidelines for evaluation that can be used in a variety of settings and illustrates the process by examining advising in an academic support program at a small New England college.