Editor’s Note

Far too often, institutions of higher education tend to limit their focus on assessment to periods of preparation for accreditation reviews. Like anyone whose career experience has included significant connection to such acute assessment efforts, I lost count long ago of the number of program and broader assessment plans designed only to impress—or at least to placate—the external forces of accountability. Almost without exception, these plans have accomplished little if anything beyond their immediate objective. Instead of contributing to the essential enterprise of teaching and learning, they are quickly relegated to some back shelf, either physical or virtual, until a subsequent accreditation process necessitates another round of faux deliberation. Perhaps more disturbing, institutions sometimes elect to use these “one time only” assessments to inform decisions on curricular and even more far-reaching strategic course corrections. Yet I cannot recall a single instance in my assessment experience when a prompt or rubric or survey functioned as envisioned the first time around. Generally, in fact, I have found that the evidence gleaned from this work does not approach true reliability until somewhere around its third iteration. Thus, I have come to appreciate that, in contrast to periodic accountability missions, meaningful assessment requires a sustained commitment to discovering what students are learning in their courses, in their majors, and through the sum of their college experience.

The articles contained in JAIE 5.1 reflect the value of assessment “for the long haul.” Tara Crowell and Elizabeth Calamidas present the results and implications of a program-assessment process that extended over a five-year period. Sharon Boland Hamill examines the structures needed to transform “closing the loop” from catchphrase to institutional way of life. Tamara Walser demonstrates the usefulness of Evaluability Assessment as a means of analyzing and refining an academic program’s assessment processes to continue furthering their positive impact on student learning. Natasha Jankowski and Ruth Slotnick articulate the qualities and commitments that assessment practitioners must embody if they are to realize the aspiration of building a “culture of assessment” at their respective institutions. Together, these authors effectively redirect the discussion away from merely generating assessment that keeps us in good standing with accreditors toward the infinitely more meaningful and stimulating work of enriching what our students learn. May they inspire the kind of assessment that truly makes us better at what we do.