Assessing the Achievement of General Education Objectives: A College-wide Approach

Abstract

Many factors are driving colleges and universities to devote at tention to assessing student learning outcomes. These factors in clude expectations of regional and specialized accrediting asso ciations; public demands for information about what is happen ing to students; governmental reporting and accountability require ments; and institutions' own recognition that, to operate with in tegrity and continuously improve programs and services, they need to know what and how much students are learning. A number of things make assessing general education learning outcomes one of the most challenging assessment areas in higher education. First, in subjects such as composition and mathemat ics, there are definable skill levels, which are relatively easier to articulate and measure than in other general education subjects, especially the social sciences and humanities. Second, student at tendance patterns at many institutions, especially those where large numbers of students transfer general education coursework taken elsewhere or depart the institution before completing their gen eral education component, make it difficult to determine what a particular school has contributed to a student's general education experience or even when the student is done at that institution. Third, faculty from many different disciplines may teach key gen eral education skills, but not assess or even have a similar under standing of what a skill entails across other disciplines. For ex ample, critical thinking is often taught by philosophers, psycholo gists, and educators, who may have quite different understand ings of critical thinking and use different assessment approaches.