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National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment | 1

O c c a s i o n a l P a p e r # 4
learningoutcomesassessment.org

National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment

Opening Doors to Faculty Involvement in Assessmen

Pat Hutchings

http://www.learningoutcomeassessment.org/

National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment | 2

About the Author

Pat Hutchings

Pat Hutchings joined the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement
of Teaching in 1998, serving as a senior scholar and then as vice presi-
dent, working closely with a wide range of programs and research
initiatives, including the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of
Teaching and Learning. She has written widely on the investiga-
tion and documentation of teaching and learning, the peer collabo-
ration and review of teaching, and the scholarship of teaching and
learning. Recent publications, drawing from Carnegie’s work, include
Ethics of Inquiry: Issues in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
(2002), Opening Lines: Approaches to the Scholarship of Teaching
and Learning (2000) and, co-authored with Mary Taylor Huber, The
Advancement of Learning: Building the Teaching Commons (2005).
She left her full-time position in December 2009 but continues to
work part-time with the Foundation on a broad range of higher
education issues. She was chair of the English department at Alverno
College from 1978 to 1987 and a senior staff member at the American
Association for Higher Education from 1987-1997. Her doctorate in
English is from the University of Iowa.

Contents

Abstract …3

Foreword…4

Opening Doors to Faculty
Involvement in Assessment… 6

Why Faculty Involvement
Matters…7
�
Obstacles to Greater
Involvement…8

Developments to Build On…10

Six Recommendations…13

Many Doors to Faculty
Involvement…17
�

References…18

NILOA
National Advisory Panel…20
Mission…20
Occasional Paper Series…20
About NILOA …21
Staff…21
Sponsors…21

The ideas and information contained in this
publication are those of the authors and do
not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie
Corporation of New York, Lumina Founda-
tion for Education, or The Teagle Foundation.

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National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment | 3

A b s t r a c t
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Opening Doors to Faculty Involvement in Assessment

The assessment literature is replete with admonitions about the importance of faculty involve-
ment, a kind of gold standard widely understood to be the key to assessment’s impact “on the
ground,” in classrooms where teachers and students meet. Unfortunately, much of what has
been done in the name of assessment has failed to engage large numbers of faculty in significant
ways.

In this paper, I examine the dynamics behind this reality, including the mixed origins of assess-
ment, coming both from within and outside academe, and a number of obstacles that stem from
the culture and organization of higher education itself. I then identify more recent develop-
ments that promise to alter those dynamics, including and especially the rising level of interest
in teaching and learning as scholarly, intellectual work. I close by proposing six ways to bring
the purposes of assessment and the regular work of faculty closer together: 1) Build assessment
around the regular, ongoing work of teaching and learning; 2) Make a place for assessment
in faculty development; 3) Integrate assessment into the preparation of graduate students; 4)
Reframe assessment as scholarship; 5) Create campus spaces and occasions for constructive
assessment conversation and action; and 6) Involve students in assessment. Together, these
strategies can make faculty involvement more likely and assessment more useful.

Pat’s paper effectively synthesizes her dozens of years of experience as a faculty member,
consultant, and colleague. To her admirable observations and recommendations about
engaging faculty in assessment, I would only add one: remember that you don’t need
everybody on board to move forward.

Peter T. Ewell
Vice President, National Center for Higher Education
Management Systems (NCHEMS)
Senior Scholar, NILOA

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National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment | 4

F o r e w o r d
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Since the emergence of assessment as a widespread phenomenon at American colleges and
universities in the mid-1980s, “faculty involvement” has been repeatedly identified as essential.
I repeated this admonition freely at that time, as did Pat Hutchings, the author of this latest
NILOA Occasional Paper. But admonishment did not make it so. NILOA’s most recent
survey of provosts, for example, reveals that gaining faculty involvement and support is among
their top concerns, and I always get similar answers when I pose this question to audiences at
conferences and workshops.

In the first portion of her paper, Pat effectively enumerates some challenges to achieving greater
faculty involvement. One of the most important is the fact that, from the outset, most faculty
perceived assessment as being principally about external accountability. As a result, many
continue to see little connection between such activities and their day-to-day life in the class-
room. To amplify Pat’s point, moreover, the entire premise of “assessment to improve instruc-
tion”—especially if it is offered by outsiders—is that there is something wrong with instruction
to begin with. This posture is not a happy one from which to begin a productive conversation.
Another salient challenge that Pat nails is the fact that there is currently little payoff to faculty
for undertaking this work. Simply telling them that “it is part of the job of teaching,” as too
many academic leaders currently do, doesn’t work very well because the connection between
assessment and teaching isn’t obvious to faculty. And things may be even worse: widespread
perceptions that assessment is essentially an administrative activity—the stuff of “strategic
planning” and “program review”—mean that faculty will shun it if only for that reason. Pat
also notes that faculty value expertise and assessment is something that they typically do not
know much about. In a similar vein, assessment is prosecuted in the alien language of business
and education—not usually the most respected disciplines on any campus.

These are formidable obstacles. But Pat also gives us reasons to hope by reviewing several areas
in which we have made progress. First, as she points out, the entire discourse about instruction
has acquired a new tone and heightened respectability. And insofar as the connection between
assessment and teaching and learning can be clarified, this new rhetoric can only benefit assess-
ment. Related to this is the rising prominence of Teaching and Learning Centers at many
institutions. At their best, they can help faculty discover the integral connection between
assessment and instruction and show them how to do assessment better. Finally, Pat observes
that assessment methods have come a very long way over the last twenty years. When all this
began (with the salient exception of Alverno College where Pat once taught), most institutions
doing assessment had to be content with re-administering the ACT Assessment or giving GREs
in various fields. Now we have creative and authentic standardized general skills tests like the
Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) and the Critical-Thinking Assessment Test (CAT), as
well as a range of solid techniques like curriculum mapping, rubric-based grading, and elec-
tronic portfolios. These technical developments have yielded valid mechanisms for gathering
evidence of student performance that look a lot more like how faculty do this than ScanTron
forms and bubble sheets. At least as important, they have made the job of assessment easier.
Given that lack of time is one of the greatest objections that faculty raise about assessment,
this also helps engagement. Finally, I’d like to add an item to Pat’s reassuring list of “hopefuls.”
While I have no concrete evidence to back up this assertion, I am becoming convinced through
sustained interaction that younger faculty members are more positive about and engaged in

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National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment | 5

F o r e w o r d ( c o n t i n u e d )
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assessment than their “Boomer generation” colleagues. This may be because they are more
collectivist and team oriented—eroding the “isolation in the classroom” syndrome that Pat
so accurately describes. But wherever it comes from, it is bound to be good for assessment’s
future.

The meat of Pat’s paper is offered in six recommendations for “opening doors to faculty involve-
ment in assessment.” The first—embedding assessment directly into the regular curriculum
through mapped and targeted assignments, graded validly and reliably through carefully
designed and piloted rubrics—has always been a personal favorite of mine, and I argued for it
in my Occasional Paper a year ago. The second and third—more emphasis on faculty develop-
ment offered through campus Teaching and Learning Centers, and greater emphasis on instruc-
tional training (and assessment) in preparing future faculty in graduate training—are familiar,
though this by no means diminishes their appropriateness. The fourth—making assessment
technique and evidence an integral part of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning—reflects
Pat’s own successful history of doing this over many years at the Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching and as AAHE’s founding Assessment Forum Director.

The last two recommendations, though, are not only sound but are fresh as well. The fifth
cogently notes the fact that colleges and universities lack spaces and opportunities for faculty
to discuss and make meaning of assessment results through sustained engagement. Time
constrained committee discussions are no place for serious collective reflection and there is
simply no “room” for this activity (figuratively or literally) in current campus discourse. This
is a serious limitation and it ought to be addressed. Sixth, Pat urges us to involve students
directly in assessment. Now there’s an idea! Not only do students have the greatest stake in
improving teaching and learning, they also are closer to the data than we are. This means that
they can frequently offer much better interpretations of assessment results and I have seen more
than one campus assessment committee learn this to its members’ benefit.

In short, Pat’s paper effectively synthesizes her dozens of years of experience as a faculty
member, consultant, and colleague. To her admirable observations and recommendations
about engaging faculty in assessment, I would only add one: remember that you don’t need
everybody on board to move forward.

Peter T. Ewell
Vice-President, National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS)
Senior Scholar, NILOA

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National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment | 6

Since the institutional assessment of student learning outcomes arrived
on the higher education scene some 25 years ago, no issue has generated
more attention than the role of faculty in such work. The research and
practice literature on the topic is packed with admonitions about the
importance of faculty involvement, which has come to be seen as a kind
of gold standard, the key to assessment’s impact “on the ground”—in
classrooms where teachers and students meet. This view, it seems safe to
say, is shared by just about everyone who works in, writes about, worries
about, or champions assessment.

What is also widely shared is a sense that the real promise of assess-
ment depends on significantly growing and deepening faculty involve-
ment—and, in short, that there has not been enough of it. In truth, the
extent to which faculty have been involved in assessment is difficult to
know—and the danger here of self-fulfilling prophecy should be kept in
mind—but in a recent national survey of campus assessment practice,
66 percent of chief academic officers name “more faculty engagement”
as the highest priority in making further progress (Kuh & Ikenberry,
2009, p. 9). Similarly, “a strong faculty leadership role” tops the list
of criteria for the Council on Higher Education Accreditation’s annual
award to campuses with exemplary assessment programs (see Eaton,
2008), and the assessment framework put forward by the Association
of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U, 2008) urges a focus on
“our students’ best work,” in which faculty must clearly play a—perhaps
the—central role. Looking back to earlier days, a set of principles devel-
oped under the sponsorship of the American Association for Higher
Education (AAHE) (Astin et al., 1993) points in the same direction,
urging that assessment be firmly connected to the classroom and the
values of educators.

On the one hand, such urgings reflect the fact that on hundreds of
campuses faculty have played critically important roles in assessment;
their efforts have produced exciting accounts by and about those who
become engaged in assessment and discover in it (sometimes to their
considerable surprise) a route to more powerful approaches to student
learning. At the same time, these urgings reflect a concern that much of
what has been done in the name of assessment has failed to engage large
numbers of faculty in significant ways.

In this paper I examine the dynamics behind this reality, identify recent
developments that may alter those dynamics by creating a more posi-
tive climate for serious work on learning and teaching, and propose six
approaches that promise to bring the purposes of assessment and the
regular work of faculty closer together—making faculty involvement
more likely and assessment more useful. While building on the observa-
tions of many who have written about these matters, I also draw on my

O p e n i n g D o o r s t o F a c u l t y
I n v o l v e m e n t i n A s s e s s m e n t

Pat Hutchings

The real promise of assessment
depends on significantly growing
and deepening faculty involve-
ment…

National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment | 7

experience as an English professor at Alverno College (where assessment
was fully integrated into faculty work), on my role as inaugural director
of the AAHE Assessment Forum,1 and on my subsequent work (much
of it with The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching)
with faculty from a wide range of disciplines and institutional types
seeking ways to make teaching more visible, valued, and effective in
meeting the needs of today’s learners.

Why Faculty Involvement Matters

For starters it’s worth looking at what happens when faculty are signifi-
cant participants in the assessment process—not just token members
of a committee cobbled together for an accreditation visit or an after-
the-fact audience for assessment results they had no part in shaping but
central voices and shapers of activity. Such significant roles have not been
the norm. As Peter Ewell (2009) points out in another NILOA paper,
from its early days in higher education, assessment was “consciously
separated from what went on in the classroom,” and especially from
grading, as part of an effort to promote “objective” data gathering (p.
19). In response, many campuses felt they had no choice but to employ
external tests and instruments that kept assessment distinct from the
regular work of faculty as facilitators and judges of student learning.
In fact, the real promise of assessment—and the area in which faculty
involvement matters first and most—lies precisely in the questions that
faculty, both individually and collectively, must ask about their students’
learning in their regular instructional work: what purposes and goals are
most important, whether those goals are met, and how to do better. As
one faculty member once told me, “assessment is asking whether my
students are learning what I am teaching.”

Such questions are not new, they are not easy, and most of all they are
not questions that can be answered by “someone else.” They are faculty
questions. Ironically, however, they have not been questions that natu-
rally arise in the daily work of the professoriate or, say, in department
meetings, which are more likely to deal with parking and schedules than
with student learning. Literary scholar Gerald Graff (2006) has written
about the skill with which academics in his field manage to side step
such conversations—which, admittedly, can become difficult, take a
wrong turn, or bog down, generating a good deal of proverbial heat and
not much light.

But listening to the voices of faculty who have taken on assessment’s
questions with colleagues, the power of the process is clear. In inter-
views conducted as part of the work of the AAHE Assessment Forum,
for instance, my colleague Ted Marchese and I heard over and over
about assessment’s power to prompt collective faculty conversation
about purposes, often for the first time; about discovering the need to
be more explicit about goals for student learning; about finding better
ways to know whether those goals are being met; and about shaping and
sharing feedback that can strengthen student learning. As a professor of
English at the University of Virginia told us, although he did not wholly

1 In preparing this paper, I returned to a 1990 Change magazine article I co-
authored with Ted Marchese, my colleague at the AAHE and its vice president.
Ted’s view of assessment has deeply influenced my own, and I am grateful to him for
thinking with me over the years about many of the issues I deal with here.

Listening to the voices of faculty
who have taken on assessment’s
questions with colleagues, the
power of assessment is clear.

National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment | 8

endorse its work, the university’s assessment steering committee was
worth sticking with because “it’s the only place on campus I can find an
important conversation about what students are learning” (Hutchings
& Marchese, 1990, p. 23). Such conversations are important in and of
themselves, but they matter, too, because they set the stage for the larger
cycle of assessment work: designing and selecting instruments and
approaches, grappling with evidence, and using results to make changes
that actually help students achieve the goals and purposes faculty believe
are most important.

All of this is by way of saying that assessment has deep-seated educa-
tional roots. A number of forces propelled assessment’s arrival on the
higher education landscape, certainly, but among the most notable was
the 1984 report, Involvement in Learning, by the National Institute of
Education’s (NIE) Study Group on the Conditions of Excellence in
American Higher Education, which called on undergraduate education
to 1) set high expectations, 2) involve students in their learning, and
3) assess and give feedback for improvement. Assessment was seen first
and foremost as an educational practice, and its champions—like Alex-
ander Astin, who served on the NIE study group—held up a vision of
educational quality based not on reputation and resources but on the
institution’s contribution to learning—and, therefore, on the work of
students and faculty.

Obstacles to Greater Involvement

While the role of assessment in learning has had and continues to have
eloquent and prestigious proponents, it has also attracted other, perhaps
louder, patrons from its earliest days in higher education. In 1986 the
National Governor’s Association (NGA) embraced the idea in a report
tellingly entitled Time for Results. A key figure in this initiative was
Governor John Ashcroft of Missouri, whose state motto, “Show Me,”
captured the tone of policy makers tired of what they saw as higher
education’s sense of entitlement and asking for proof and accountability.
In fairness, it should be said that external calls for assessment took a
range of forms in the early years, and many of them were sensible and
well intentioned. Alverno College’s much-touted model of assessment
in the service of individual student learning (which was prominently
featured in the NGA report) captured the imagination of some policy
makers, and the general trend as mandates began to emerge at the state
level was toward guidelines that invited, or at least permitted, campus
engagement and invention connected to local curriculum and teaching.
Nevertheless, the bottom line was that assessment, from its earliest
days, became identified with a group of actors outside academe whose
patronage cast a pall over its possibilities within the academy. From the
faculty point of view, this looked a lot like someone else’s agenda—and
not an altogether friendly someone else, at that.

But governors and external mandates have only been part of the scenario.
Obstacles to fuller faculty involvement in assessment have been encoun-
tered in several directions, including that of higher education itself.

First, for many faculty the language of assessment has been less than
welcoming. While some observers—attempting to make a virtue of
necessity—have pointed out that the word’s etymology comes from

Assessment…became identified
with a group of actors outside
academe whose patronage cast a
pall over its possibilities within
the academy. From the faculty
point of view, this looked a lot
like someone else’s agenda—
and not an altogether friendly
someone else, at that.

National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment | 9

‘‘sitting down beside” (in acts of coaching and feedback between teacher
and student), louder to most ears have been echoes of less congenial
activities: accounting, testing, evaluation, measurement, benchmarking,
and so forth—language from business and education, not the most
respected fields on most campuses. As a group assembled for a Teagle
Foundation “listening” on assessment observed, “If one endorsed the
idea that, say, a truly successful liberal arts education is transformative
or inspires wonder, the language of inputs and outputs and ‘value added’
leaves one cold” (Struck, 2007, p. 2). In short, it is striking how quickly
assessment can come to be seen as part of “the management culture”
(Walvoord, 2004, p. 7) rather than as a process at the heart of faculty’s
work and interactions with students.

A second obstacle to fuller faculty involvement has been that faculty
are not trained in assessment. Put simply, graduate education aims to
develop scholarly expertise in one’s field. While forward-looking doctoral
programs are now beginning to treat teaching as a more prominent part
of professional formation, it remains true that reflecting on educational
purposes, formulating learning goals, designing assignments and exams,
and using data for improvement are activities that live, if at all, only on
the far margins of most Ph.D. students’ experience. Nor has assessment
had a central place in professional development experiences for faculty.
Early in the higher education assessment movement most campus
teaching centers kept student outcomes assessment at arm’s length, wary
of mixing their (almost completely voluntary) services with an enterprise
associated with mandates and evaluation. This has begun to change (as
noted below) but, meanwhile, faculty who might have been interested
in assessment have had no ready place or opportunity to learn about
it. Especially as assessment conversations turn technical—as they do,
perhaps prematurely—faculty, for whom expertise is a premier value,
have bowed out, not wanting to be seen as amateurs and dilettantes.
This dynamic has likely been exacerbated when the campus, for good
reasons, establishes an assessment office and specialized staff to manage
it, almost by definition marginalizing “regular” faculty.

A third obstacle to faculty involvement has been that the work of assess-
ment is an uneasy match with institutional reward systems. It is impor-
tant not to overgeneralize here. On some campuses, particularly those
where teaching is the central mission, assessment has been recognized
and valued as part of the faculty role, either as an aspect of teaching or
(as in the case of faculty sitting on an assessment planning or advisory
committee) as valued institutional service. In many higher education
settings, however, assessment, like teaching more generally, has often
been undervalued or invisible in promotion and tenure deliberations, a
circumstance that has certainly not encouraged faculty to see assessment
as their work.

Fourth, and finally, it may be that faculty have not yet seen sufficient
evidence that assessment makes a difference. There’s a chicken-and-
egg dynamic at work here; more faculty involvement would presum-
ably make a bigger difference. But the fact remains that the benefits of
assessment are uncertain and that faculty facing rising demands on their
time and energy must make choices. Not choosing assessment, after
all, may be a rational decision. Indeed, assessment is seen as “redun-
dant” on many campuses, duplicating already existing processes and not
yielding additional benefits (Kuh & Ikenberry, 2009, p. 9). Similarly,

In many higher education
settings, assessment, like teaching
more generally, has often
been undervalued or invisible
in promotion and tenure
deliberations, a circumstance
that has certainly not encouraged
faculty to see assessment as their
work.

National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment | 10

as evidenced by numerous reports over the years, many campuses have
succeeded in “doing assessment” but have fallen short in using the results
to make changes in the educational experience of their students (Carey,
2007; Hutchings & Marchese, 1990; Lopez, 1998). Faculty perceptions
reflect this shortfall, as shown in data from the 2009 Faculty Survey of
Student Engagement; while 75 percent of respondents indicated their
campuses were involved in assessment “quite a bit” or “very much,” only
about a third had positive views of the dissemination and usefulness of
assessment findings (National Survey of Student Engagement, 2009,
pp. 21–22). Indeed, there is now a growing awareness that the neat logic
of “data-driven improvement’’ is much easier to invoke than to enact
(Bond, 2009); a recently announced initiative of the Spencer Founda-
tion, for instance, “questions the assumption that the simple presence of
data invariably leads to improved outcomes and performance, and that
those who are presented information under data-driven improvement
schemes will know how best to make sense of it and transform their
practice” (see www.spencer.org). Faculty who are already and increas-
ingly pressed in too many directions would be readier to join the assess-
ment process, one might surmise, if its benefits were easier to see.

Developments to Build On

The four obstacles to faculty involvement in assessment noted above
were in place for the most part when assessment first appeared on the
higher education scene in the mid-1980s, and they are still in force
today. But it is not true, despite metaphors of graveyards and slow-
turning ships, that there is nothing new under the higher education
sun. A number of recent developments may be creating a more hospi-
table climate for a faculty role in assessment.

At the most general level is the growth of attention to teaching and
learning. Traditionally less visible and valued than other aspects of
academic life in higher education, the profile of pedagogy has clearly
risen over the last two decades. In 1999, for instance, my Carnegie
Foundation colleague Mary Huber set out to map the various forms
and forums for exchange about matters pedagogical. “What has been
surprising to us,” she reported,

is not only how many forums there are right now for this
exchange, but how surprised people seem to be to find this out.
In other words, what we are finding appears to be at odds with
the prevailing stereotype that there has been little investment
of intellectual interest and energy in teaching and learning in
higher education. Perhaps in comparison to traditional research
this is so, but the field of teaching and learning in higher educa-
tion is far more active (if not very evenly distributed) than many
might think. (Huber, 1999, p. 3)

In short, higher education, here in the U.S. and internationally, has
seen a huge rise in the number of campus events, conferences, special
initiatives, funded projects, journals, online forums, and multimedia
resources shining a light on faculty’s work as teachers. Assessment, in its
broadest and most important sense of making judgments about student
learning, has been a part of this expanding “teaching commons” (Huber
& Hutchings, 2005), creating a more generous space for faculty engage-
ment with campus assessment activities.

Faculty who are already and
increasingly pressed in too many
directions would be readier to
join the assessment process, one
might surmise, if its benefits
were easier to see.

http:www.spencer.org

National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment | 11

Within this general phenomenon one also finds the growth of more
focused communities around specific pedagogies (service learning,
problem-based learning, undergraduate research, and so forth) and
the teaching and learning of particular fields (chemical education, for
example, or the teaching of writing). As champions of their chosen
approach, these communities have naturally turned to assessment-
like activities for evidence of impact and to shape next steps. External
funding for these efforts has, increasingly, mandated such data gathering,
and the notion that educational reform should be informed by evidence
has become a commonplace—so much so, in fact, that talking about
teaching without invoking learning has become a sort of anathema.

At the same time, and running hand in hand with these developments,
has been the rise of the scholarship of teaching and learning, a move-
ment that has gained significant momentum over the past decade.
Over 250 campuses have been involved in the Carnegie Academy for
the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL, running from
1998–2009), and many more campuses in the U.S. and beyond have
embraced this agenda. Today, growing numbers of faculty from a full
range of fields and all institutional types are posing and investigating
questions about their students’ learning, using what they discover to
improve their own classrooms and to contribute to a body of knowl-
edge others can build on. Such work has become an entrée for those
who perhaps would not be drawn to assessment but feel welcomed by
the idea of seeing their teaching and their students’ learning as sites for
scholarly inquiry—particularly in a community of like-minded educa-
tors interested in learning from their findings. A 2009 survey of CASTL
campuses indicates that such work, even when involving relatively small
numbers of faculty, brings energy and openness to institutional assess-
ment activities:

The scholarship of teaching and learning is often mentioned
[in the Carnegie survey] as having had an effect on assessment.
Departments where faculty have been engaged in inquiry into
the students’ experience understand learning outcomes better
because “they have assessed student learning in their classrooms,”
and are “noticeably less hostile to institutional assessment.”
Respondents also noted specific programs (the first-year experi-
ence, general education) and majors (biology) where scholarship
of teaching and learning work has been woven into assessment
approaches. (Ciccone, Huber, Hutchings, & Cambridge, 2009,
p. 9)

Clearly there are productive bridge-building possibilities here, as the
scholarship of teaching and learning and assessment share overlapping
agendas, practices, and institutional constituencies and as growing
faculty involvement in the former shifts understandings of the latter to
more clearly align assessment with what faculty actually do as teachers.

Moreover, this kind of serious, intellectual work on teaching and learning
is making its way—albeit slowly—into campus practices and policies
related to faculty roles and rewards. In a 2002 AAHE national survey,
two thirds of chief academic officers reported changes “to encourage and
reward a broader definition of scholarship” (O’Meara, 2005, p. 261). It
is no accident that for more than a decade the assessment conversation
in this country ran in parallel with an energetic national conversation

Today, growing numbers of faculty
from a full range of fields and all
institutional types are posing and
investigating questions about their
students’ learning, using what
they discover to improve their own
classrooms and to contribute to a
body of knowledge others can build
on.

National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment | 12

about faculty roles and rewards. That conversation had waned somewhat
by the time the AAHE Forum on Faculty Roles and Rewards concluded
a number of years ago, but the Association of American Colleges &
Universities (AAC&U) has since stepped in with new leadership—
organizing conferences on the topic and recommending in its much-
circulated Framework for Accountability that “campus reward systems
should incorporate the importance of faculty members’ intellectual and
professional leadership in both assessment and educational improve-
ment” (p. 12). One route to this end is the work of the Peer Review of
Teaching Project (PRTP)—a national initiative promoting the use of
course portfolios—a tool “that combines inquiry into the intellectual
work of a course, careful investigation of student understanding and
performance, and faculty reflection on teaching effectiveness” (not a bad
definition of assessment at its best). The PRTP has engaged hundreds
of faculty members from numerous universities, many of whose course
portfolios can be found at http://www.courseportfolio.org[.] These arti-
facts and the review processes they make possible are raising the profile
of inquiry into learning and teaching, by whatever name, and setting
the conditions in which such work can be rewarded, as other forms of
scholarship are.

Finally, the climate for faculty involvement in assessment is becoming
more hospitable with the emergence of new tools and technologies. A
wider range of instruments is now available—beyond the small set of
standardized tests most visible in assessment’s first decade—and some of
these are clearly more related to the tasks and assignments that faculty
require of students in their own classrooms. The Collegiate Learning
Assessment (CLA), for instance, forgoes reductive multiple-choice
formats in favor of authentic tasks that would be at home in the best
classrooms; CLA leaders now offer workshops to help faculty design
similar tasks for their own classrooms, the idea being that these activi-
ties are precisely what students need to build and improve their critical-
thinking and problem-solving skills. The widely used National Survey of
Student Engagement, and its cousin, the Community College Survey of
Student Engagement, document the extent to which students engage in
educational practices associated with high levels of learning and devel-
opment—practices like frequent writing, service learning and discussing
ideas with faculty outside of class. Electronic student portfolios, which
over the last decade have become widespread on all kinds of campuses,
now provide a vehicle for bringing the regular work of the classroom
under the assessment umbrella in manageable ways (see, for example,
Miller & Morgaine, 2009). Some campuses are now employing online
data management systems, like E-Lumen and TracDat, that invite
faculty input into and access to assessment data (Hutchings, 2009).
With developments like these facilitating faculty interest and engage-
ment in ways impossible (or impossibly time consuming or technical)
in assessment’s early days, new opportunities are on the rise.

Obstacles, it’s true, are also on the rise. On campuses across the nation,
the picture is hardly rosy. Cutbacks are everywhere; faculty are increas-
ingly stressed and pressed, with many more in part-time, contingent
positions; and higher education is seen by some as “underachieving”
(Bok, 2006), failing many of the students who need it most. The point
here is not that faculty involvement in assessment will now be easy but
that there have been developments to build on going forward.

The climate for faculty
involvement in assessment is
becoming more hospitable with
the emergence of new tools and
technologies. A wider range of
instruments is now available…
and some of these are clearly
more related to the tasks
and assignments that faculty
require of students in their own
classrooms.

http://www.courseportfolio.org/peer/pages/index.jsp

National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment | 13

Opening Doors to Faculty Involvement:
Six Recommendations

In this spirit, now may well be a good time for campuses to survey their
full range of assessment activities, recognizing that not all of them use
the language of assessment and that they come in a wide variety of shapes
and sizes. Having the fullest possible picture in view may suggest new
ways to encourage faculty activity where it already exists, to support it
where it is emergent, and to think harder about where and exactly how
the scarce resource of faculty time and talent can be best deployed. The
following six recommendations may serve as keys—opening doors to
faculty involvement in assessment.

1. Build Assessment Around the Regular, Ongoing Work of
Teaching and Learning

Assessment should grow out of faculty’s questions about their students’
learning and the regular, ongoing work of teaching: syllabus and curric-
ulum design, the development of assignments and classroom activities,
the construction of exams, and the provision of feedback to students.
These kinds of closer-to-the-classroom connections can help to move
assessment “away from the center, and out to the capillary level,” as one
group of practitioners suggested, making it more “centrifugal” (Struck,
2007, p. 2).

This injunction to build assessment around faculty’s regular work in the
classroom has been part of assessment’s gospel from the beginning, but
doing so has often gone against the grain, as campus assessment prac-
tices were consciously separated from what went on in the classroom
(Ewell, 2009). In the face of this disconnect, campuses could hardly find
a better place to begin (or to resuscitate) assessment than by building
on (rather than dismissing) the practice of grading—an approach advo-
cated by Barbara Walvoord (2004). Starting, as it were, at “ground
level”—with a practice in which every faculty member is engaged every
semester in every class for every student—can bring to the fore impor-
tant questions about course design, assignments and exams, and feed-
back to students, which is arguably an aspect of assessment that would
benefit from much more attention—and where faculty interests and
talents would be particularly to the point. A focus on grading and feed-
back would also address the long-standing problem of student motiva-
tion by assuring that assessment does indeed “count” in ways that elicit
students’ best work.

Embedding assessment in the classroom then sets the stage for work at
the next level of the department or program, contexts which draw on
what most members of the professoriate know and care most about:
their discipline or field. Those seeking to engage more faculty more fully
in assessment would do well to invite and explore questions about how
students “decode the disciplines” (Pace & Middendorf, 2004) and learn
“disciplinary habits of mind” (Garung, Chick, & Haynie, 2008)—to
quote from the titles of two recent volumes that map this terrain. When
assessment reflects and respects disciplinary interests—recognizing,
for example, that learning history is not the same as learning music or
chemistry—it is more likely to lead to consequential faculty engage-
ment. Assessment, one might say, must live where faculty live, in the
classrooms where they teach the field they love.

Embedding assessment in the
classroom sets the stage for
work at the next level of the
department or program, contexts
which draw on what most
members of the professoriate
know and care most about: their
discipline or field.

National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment | 14

2. Make a Place for Assessment in Faculty Development

Over the last several decades many campuses (research universities, first,
but now a much broader swath) have established teaching and learning
centers that offer a broad array of instructional improvement opportu-
nities—and assessment can be an integral part of their work.

Signs of movement in this direction are increasingly evident. Nancy
Chism, a national leader in the faculty development community, argues
that teaching improves through “naturally occurring cycles of inquiry”
in which faculty plan, act, observe, and reflect. Teaching center staff
support this process, she says, by assisting faculty with data collection
and by suggesting instruments and methods for obtaining “good infor-
mation on the impact of teaching” (Chism, 2008, n.p.). Bringing faculty
together around such evidence, facilitating constructive conversations
about its meaning and implications, setting local efforts in the context of
a larger body of research—these are important roles that many teaching
centers are now taking up, roles that strengthen the growing sense of
community around pedagogy and a shared commitment to evidence.

In this same spirit, many centers offer small grants to faculty trying out
a new classroom approach, and some now require them to assess the
impact of their innovation on student learning and to share what they
have learned in campus events, seminars, and conferences or in online
representations of their work. While there’s a danger in linking such
work too closely to the machinery of institutional assessment (turning
an intellectual impulse into a bureaucratic requirement), most faculty
are eager to see their work contribute to something larger, and teaching
centers can play an important brokering role in this regard, developing
faculty habits of inquiry and evidence use that are the sine qua non of
assessment—and essential to good teaching, as well. In short, assess-
ment should be central to professional development.

3. Build Assessment into the Preparation of Graduate Students

This recommendation is part and parcel of the previous one (teaching
centers often serve graduate students as well as faculty), but it bears
highlighting separately as well, especially since signs of progress in this
area are beginning to appear.

The chemistry department at the University of Michigan, for instance,
offers a program of study for graduate students interested in a more
sustained experience in teaching, curriculum design, and assessment.
The multicampus, NSF-funded Center for the Integration of Research,
Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL) (see www.cirtl.net), coordinated by
the University of Wisconsin–Madison, trains STEM graduate students
and postdocs to bring their investigative skills as researchers to their
work as teachers. The Teagle Foundation has recently funded a number
of similar efforts, some on individual campuses and one—through the
Council of Graduate Schools—tellingly entitled “Preparing Future
Faculty to Assess Student Learning Outcomes” (see www.teaglefounda-
tion.org/grantmaking/grantees/gradschool.aspx).

Most faculty are eager to see their
work contribute to something larger,
and teaching centers can play an
important brokering role in this
regard, developing faculty habits of
inquiry and evidence use that are
the sine qua non of assessment—and
central to good teaching, as well.

http://www.teaglefoundation.org/grantmaking/grantees/gradschool.aspx

http:www.cirtl.net

National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment | 15

These examples are still the exception, admittedly, but they show what is
possible. Weaving assessment into courses and experiences designed to
prepare beginning scholars for their future work as educators is a prom-
ising step forward, with long-term benefits as today’s graduate students
become tomorrow’s faculty members and campus leaders.

4. Reframe the Work of Assessment as Scholarship

As scholars, faculty study all manner of artifacts and phenomena; their
students’ learning should be seen as an important site for investigation,
as well. Creating a place (and incentives) for greater faculty involve-
ment in assessment means seeing such work not simply as service or as
good campus citizenship but as an important intellectual enterprise—a
form of scholarship reflecting faculty’s professional judgment about the
nature of deep understanding of their field and about how such under-
standing is developed.

In this sense, assessment would do well to find common cause with
the scholarship of teaching and learning. This must be done carefully,
given the different impulses and motivations behind each, but as noted
above the two movements can strengthen each other. Thus, for starters,
campus leaders of assessment and those charged with advancing the
scholarship of teaching and learning should explore shared agendas and
practices. A parallel discussion between these two communities would
be beneficial at the national level as well—for example, by including
leaders from the scholarship of teaching and learning community at
assessment conferences, and vice versa.

Also needed is continued attention to the development and use of new
forms, formats, and genres for capturing the scholarly work of teaching,
learning, and assessment. The course portfolio model mentioned above
is perhaps pre-eminent in this regard, with a growing community of
users trading artifacts, reviewing one another’s evidence and reflections,
and putting their materials forward in both formative and summative
decision-making settings (Bernstein, Burnett, Goodburn, & Savory,
2006). But portfolios are only one possibility, and inventing other
ways for faculty engaged in assessment—be it in their own classroom
or beyond—to document and share their work in ways that can be
reviewed, built on, and rewarded is a critical step forward that can help
propel and reenergize the larger conversation about faculty roles and
rewards.

5. Create Campus Spaces and Occasions for Constructive
Assessment Conversation and Action

Behind many of the long-standing challenges of assessment is a more
fundamental reality: that teaching and learning have traditionally
been seen and undertaken as private activities, occurring behind class-
room doors both literally and metaphorically closed. As noted above,
this reality has shifted significantly in recent years, as teaching and
learning have become topics of widespread interest, debate, and inquiry.
Campuses seeking to engage more faculty more deeply with assessment
must find ways to create such opportunities—and there are now many
possibilities and models.

National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment | 16

Some readers will recall, as an example of such opportunities, the
Harvard Assessment Seminars from the 1990’s, sponsored by Derek
Bok, led and reported on by Richard Light, and involving a large group
of notable educators from across the university (and a few from nearby
institutions as well) in gathering and acting on evidence about a range
of widely relevant questions about undergraduate learning (Light, 1990,
1991). On the more modest side, departments can set aside time in
their regular meetings to examine issues of teaching and learning or set
up teaching circles specifically dedicated to such work. Other possibili-
ties include multidisciplinary reading and study groups (perhaps facili-
tated by a teaching center), faculty learning communities and inquiry
groups (Cox & Richlin, 2004; Huber, 2008), and, importantly, oppor-
tunities to interact and share findings with peers beyond the institution,
as faculty expect to do in other types of scholarly work.

6. Involve Students in Assessment

If faculty have been less than enthusiastic about assessment, it is not for
lack of caring about their students’ learning. Indeed, bringing students
more actively into the processes of assessment may well be the most
powerful route to greater faculty engagement.

One relevant line of work in this vein is student self-assessment—
providing the tools and frameworks that allow learners to monitor and
direct their own development. Alverno College is arguably the pioneer
in this arena, but there are many recent efforts as well, including
AAC&U’s push for “intentional learning” (AAC&U, 2002); the wide-
spread use of e-portfolios as a vehicle for students to reflect on and to
direct their own progress (Yancy, 2009); the creation of rubrics that can
serve as frameworks for students to assess their own learning (Rhodes,
2010; Walvoord, 2004); and the interest in approaches that develop
students’ metacognitive abilities (see, for instance, Strategic Literacy
Initiative, 2007). Similarly, working under the banner of the scholar-
ship of teaching and learning, a number of campuses have invented
vehicles for involving students in campus conversations about and
studies of teaching and learning, arguing that they should be collabora-
tors and co-inquirers (not simply objects of study) and that they can
make distinctive contributions to classroom research projects, curricular
evaluation and revision, and institutional ethnography (Werder & Otis,
2010).

Efforts like these speak to the role of students as agents of their own
learning, but in a larger sense they are also steps toward making the
campus an organization in which all members, top to bottom and across
the institution, are focused on improvement—and where evidence and
reflection are part of the routines of daily life. These routines must be
developed across the campus at multiple levels—from the institution,
to the program, to the course and classroom where they manifest them-
selves in the relationship between faculty and students and in cycles of
learning, assessment, feedback, and further learning. Situating assess-

Bringing students more actively
into the processes of assessment
may well be the most powerful
route to greater faculty
engagement.

National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment | 17

ment within those cycles is the key to faculty involvement and to making
assessment—at all levels—a more positive and consequential process.

Many Doors to Faculty Involvement

Behind all of the above recommendations is a broader one: that there
is no single best way to support greater faculty engagement with assess-
ment. Significant numbers of faculty have been involved, and more will
enter into the work if opportunities present themselves in appealing,
doable forms aligned with faculty’s interests, talents, time, and values.
For some faculty, assessment will be done primarily in the context of
their own teaching—by gathering evidence, for instance, about the
impact of a classroom innovation or a new application of technology
and using what is discovered to improve students’ learning; this work
matters and it should be acknowledged and shared more broadly in
ways that are appropriate. Other faculty will be engaged by efforts at
the department or program level, perhaps through a curricular reform
effort in which assessment will play a part; again, this work should be
seen and acknowledged as contributing to the campus’s efforts to use
evidence to prompt reflection, innovation, and improvement. Some
faculty will find through their assessment activities new scholarly inter-
ests and communities that will change their career directions in major
ways; others will discover more bounded ways to contribute. What-
ever the focus or commitment, the need for significant investments of
faculty time are likely to be higher in assessment’s early stages, declining
as experience is gained and as processes become more integrated into
regular work.

Making all contributions—large or small, sustained or episodic, early
or later in the process—more visible and valued, and opening a variety
of doors to assessment, is a critical step forward. In this spirit, campus
leaders may need to think more broadly and more creatively about
where and how faculty can be involved most productively in the work of
assessment—matching tasks to talents, needs to interests, and remem-
bering, above all, that assessment is only a part of the larger enterprise
of improvement in higher education.

There is no single best way
to support greater faculty
engagement with the scholarship
of teaching and learning.

National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment | 18

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National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment | 20

NILOA National Advisory Panel

Trudy W. Banta
Professor
Indiana University-Purdue University
Indianapolis

Douglas C. Bennett
President
Earlham College

Robert M. Berdahl
President
Association of American Universities

Molly Corbett Broad
President
American Council on Education

Judith Eaton
President
Council for Higher Education Accreditation

Richard Ekman
President
Council of Independent Colleges

Joni Finney
Practice Professor
University of Pennsylvania

Vice President, National Center for Public
Policy and Higher Education

Susan Johnston
Executive Vice President
Association of Governing Boards

Paul Lingenfelter
President
State Higher Education Executive Officers

George Mehaffy
Vice President
Academic Leadership and Change
American Association of State Colleges and
Universities

Margaret Miller
Professor
University of Virginia

Charlene Nunley
Program Director
Doctoral Program in Community College
Policy and Administration
University of Maryland University College

Randy Swing
Executive Director
Association for Institutional Research

Carol Geary Schneider
President
Association of American Colleges and
Universities

David Shulenburger
Vice President
Association of Public and Land-Grant
Universities

Belle Wheelan
President
Southern Association of Colleges and Schools

George Wright
President
Prairie View A&M University

Ex-Officio Members
Peter Ewell
Vice President
National Center for Higher Education
Management Systems

Stanley Ikenberry
Interim President
University of Illinois

George Kuh
Chancellor’s Professor
Indiana University

NILOA Mission

NILOA’s primary objective is to
discover and disseminate ways that
academic programs and institutions
can productively use assessment data
internally to inform and strengthen
undergraduate education, and exter-
nally to communicate with policy
makers, families and other stake-
holders.

NILOA Occasional Paper
Series

NILOA Occasional Papers
are commissioned to examine
contemporary issues that will inform
the academic community of the
current state-of-the art of assessing
learning outcomes in American higher
education. The authors are asked to
write for a general audience in order
to provide comprehensive, accurate
information about how institutions and
other organizations can become more
proficient at assessing and reporting
student learning outcomes for the
purposes of improving student learning
and responsibly fulfilling expectations
for transparency and accountability
to policy makers and other external
audiences.

Comments and questions about this
paper should be sent to
sprovez2@illinois.edu.

mailto:sprovez2@illinois.edu

National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment | 21

About NILOA

• � The National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA)
was established in December 2008.

• � NILOA is co-located at the University of Illinois and Indiana Univer-
sity.

• � The NILOA web site went live on February 11, 2009.
www.learningoutcomesassessment.org

• � The NILOA research team reviewed 725 institution web sites for
learning outcomes assessment transparency from March 2009 to
August 2009.

• � One of the co-principal NILOA investigators, George Kuh, founded
the National Survey for Student Engagement (NSSE).

• � The other co-principal investigator for NILOA, Stanley Ikenberry,
was president of the University of Illinois from 1979 to 1995 and
of the American Council of Education from 1996 to 2001. He is
currently serving as Interim President of the University of Illinois.

• � Peter Ewell joined NILOA as a senior scholar in November 2009.

NILOA Staff

NATIONAL INSTITuTE FOR LEARNING OuTCOMES ASSESSMENT

Stanley Ikenberry, Co-Principal Investigator

George Kuh, Co-Principal Investigator and Director

Peter Ewell, Senior Scholar

Staci Provezis, Project Manager

Jillian Kinzie, Associate Research Scientist

Jason Goldfarb, Research Analyst

Natasha Jankowski, Research Analyst

Gloria Jea, Research Analyst

Julia Makela, Research Analyst

NILOA Sponsors

Carnegie Corporation of New York

Lumina Foundation for Education

The Teagle Foundation

Produced by Creative Services | Public Affairs at the University of Illinois for NILOA. 10.032

http:www.learningoutcomesassessment.org

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