What Do You Really Want Students To Know?: Perspectives About Learning and Assessment from Faculty in Creative Fields of Study

This article examines how theater, music, and art and design undergraduate programs assess student learning. One hundred twenty-three programs provided quantitative and qualitative survey assessment data in five categories: knowledge building, creative production, contextualization, communication, and professionalism. Gale and Bond's four-part framework informed the development of the instrument sections, but the results of this study also support the credibility of the framework. Two overarching themes in the arts are creativity and performance, not only in terms of what is being assessed but also in how assessment is carried out.