Assessing Student Learning in General Education: Good Practice Case Studies (review)

In a review of Mary Allen’s Assessing General Education Programs (2006), Susan Aloi questioned whether “we really need another book on how to do assessment in higher education” (2007, p. 170). Marilee Bresciani has indeed compiled another such book; but her offering, like Allen’s, is valuable due to its specific, practitioner focus on general education programs. Assessing Student Learning in General Education: Good Practice Case Studies presents a collection of case studies that are intended to help faculty and administrators understand good practice in the assessment of student learning as it relates to general education. The volume is a useful resource for how to design and implement outcomes-based assessment “to identify what students are learning” from today’s “general education efforts” (1). At the same time, to use the words of contributor Nancy Womack of Isothermal Community College (Spindale, North Carolina), the book reminds readers that the “purposes for all assessment practices. . . [should be] to improve instruction and to promote learning” (108).

Bresciani, an associate professor of postsecondary education at San Diego State University who was formerly both assistant vice president for institutional assessment at Texas A&M University and director of assessment at North Carolina State University, has assembled thirteen descriptive and self-reflective studies of general education assessment—collectively, the work of twenty-two contributors—from a diverse array of higher education settings in the United States. Her attention to the “vertical” nature of higher education (to borrow a concept from John Thelin [2004, p. xx]) is commendable: Case studies reflect the assessment of general education at community colleges, four-year liberal arts colleges, comprehensive public universities, doctoral/research-extensive institutions, and even a large multi-institution system (the State University of New York). This diversity of representation adds immeasurably to the usefulness of the volume, since readers can, at the very least, identify with and learn from processes and experiences at institutions similar to their own. Additionally, students of higher education or assessment can learn, firsthand, how analogous issues are navigated at institutions within the various strata of the postsecondary hierarchy. Indeed, certain themes resonate across all of the case studies—themes that speak to the nature and roles of general education, the purposes and implementation of assessment, and the enactment of institutional change.

Bresciani outlines her purpose and methodology in the preface, explaining how the case study institutions were selected and describing the general outline that all invited institutions were asked to follow in presenting their case studies. In the introductory chapter, Bresciani presents nine challenges to assessing student learning in general education. With each challenge, she provides a number of questions that could stimulate conversation on fundamental issues related to the evaluation of general education. As did Allen (2006), Bresciani contextualizes her study of general education assessment by exploring the existential questions of general education: its debatable goals, expectations, ownership, and relation to both disciplinary knowledge and the co-curricular world. She reminds readers, also, of the importance of institutional culture, mission, and context in shaping the purpose of general education. In short, the clear message is that educators need to know what they want students to learn—and how they plan to go about delivering opportunities to promote such learning—before assessment plans can be designed or implemented.

The thirteen chapters at the heart of the volume present the thirteen brief case studies (averaging sixteen pages apiece), arranged not quite alphabetically by institutional name. Each contributed case study begins with a description of the institution, an overview of the institutional culture, and an overview of the general education program. Next, the process for assessing the general education program is described, with at least one contextualized example, including desired outcomes, evaluation methods, criteria, observations, and decisions based on the findings. Case studies conclude with recommendations for implementing the assessment process and a discussion of at least one challenge encountered and...