Project MUSE®: Journal of Assessment and Institutional Effectiveness - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/565
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Journal of Assessment and Institutional Effectiveness.daily12026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 2 (2012) - vol. 12 (2022)Latest Articles: Journal of Assessment and Institutional EffectivenessTWOProject MUSE®Journal of Assessment and Institutional Effectiveness2160-67572160-6765Latest articles in Journal of Assessment and Institutional Effectiveness. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Grades and Learning
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/902710
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What have college graduates learned? Are they prepared for life after college— and what does that mean? Such questions about higher education’s “return on investment” have come into sharper focus with rising costs of college and widening gaps in economic outcomes. As parents, students, employers, and citizens, we want answers to inform personal choices about attending college and to inform public policies affecting higher education.Given the scope and diversity of higher education in the United States, questions about a degree’s value are bound to be complex. Traditionally consumers have been able to rely on accreditors to certify that an institution meets standards, but this role has become complicated because of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/565/image/coversmallGrades and Learning2023-07-24text/htmlen-USGrades and Learning2023-07-242023TWOProject MUSE®1016132026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002023-07-24Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead) ed. by Susan D. Blum (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/902711
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Although grading is ubiquitous in our education system, grades are subjective and unreliable as feedback for reflecting students’ actual knowledge and do not serve the purpose for schooling, which is learning. Yet, teachers continue to use grades to measure performance and serve as indicators of success, which challenges efforts to reimagine structural changes in grading. Praise should be given to the contributing authors of Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead), edited by Susan D. Blum, for tackling the problem of grading by sharing alternatives to the traditional grading system, which has failed to enhance the primary outcome of education. The authors share alternative
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/565/image/coversmallUngrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead) ed. by Susan D. Blum (review)2023-07-24text/htmlen-USUngrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead) ed. by Susan D. Blum (review)2023-07-242023TWOProject MUSE®100362026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002023-07-24Designed to Learn: Using Design Thinking to Bring Purpose and Passion to the Classroom by L. Portnoy (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/902712
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Author Lindsay Portnoy begins Designed to Learn: Using Design Thinking to Bring Purpose and Passion to the Classroom by characterizing design thinking as “creating learning environments that foster students’ ability to design solutions to today’s pressing problems” (p. 2). While somewhat focused on pre-K through 12 education, this central theme drives both the tone and the structure of the book. The result is a well-crafted, usable manual for educators at all levels.Throughout the book Portnoy emphasizes feedback, especially formative feedback, making this a perfect resource for use within an assessment- forward institution. The design orientation builds upon backward design as promulgated by Wiggins and McTighe in
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/565/image/coversmallDesigned to Learn: Using Design Thinking to Bring Purpose and Passion to the Classroom by L. Portnoy (review)2023-07-24text/htmlen-USDesigned to Learn: Using Design Thinking to Bring Purpose and Passion to the Classroom by L. Portnoy (review)2023-07-242023TWOProject MUSE®73732026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002023-07-24Grades and Assessment: A Reply to David Eubanks
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/902713
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Faculty assigned grades are the oldest and most familiar ways to judge student achievement in college. And, as David Eubanks points out, they have several advantages as assessment approaches. To begin with, students care about grades and are motivated to do their best—a condition not generally true for externally administered assessments like standardized tests. In addition, if they are used in the aggregate in the form of an overall grade-point-average (GPA), they are based on at least 40 independent faculty judgments taken throughout a given student’s course of enrollment, not just at the end. Finally, for those interested in examining institutional effectiveness, they are already in place; using them does not
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/565/image/coversmallGrades and Assessment: A Reply to David Eubanks2023-07-24text/htmlen-USGrades and Assessment: A Reply to David Eubanks2023-07-242023TWOProject MUSE®112442026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002023-07-24It’s a Matter of Trust: Why Grades Are Persona non Grata in Assessment
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/902714
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David Eubanks’s “Grades and Learning” is a tale of two arguments, one explicit and one implicit. Eubanks owns the explicit argument. In “Grades and Learning” Eubanks presents a series of careful arguments and models to show that grades can help us better understand how students learn at our institutions. The unspoken assumption behind Eubanks’s argument is that grades are excluded from our assessment toolkit because the assessment community has focused on their shortcomings as measures of student learning without considering their potential strengths. To this end, Eubanks provides evidence of the potential utility of grades and gently reminds us that established assessment tools, like rubrics, also have
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/565/image/coversmallIt’s a Matter of Trust: Why Grades Are Persona non Grata in Assessment2023-07-24text/htmlen-USIt’s a Matter of Trust: Why Grades Are Persona non Grata in Assessment2023-07-242023TWOProject MUSE®274052026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002023-07-24A Response to “Grades and Learning” from the Ivory Trenches
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/902715
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I am a full-time faculty member in Sociology at a public, urban community college whose students mirror the profiles of students at community colleges nationwide, with majorities of women and members of minoritized communities and an average age of 25 (Quinsigamond Community College, 2022). Our faculty reflects national trends for community colleges as well: Around 70% of our sections are taught by contingent faculty or full-timers like me who supplement their income by teaching additional courses on continuing-education contracts. I’ve been at my institution since 2005, after teaching as an adjunct for over 10 years in public and private institutions in southern New England while earning graduate degrees in
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/565/image/coversmallA Response to “Grades and Learning” from the Ivory Trenches2023-07-24text/htmlen-USA Response to “Grades and Learning” from the Ivory Trenches2023-07-242023TWOProject MUSE®266332026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002023-07-24Another Silo Isn’t the Answer: A Collaborative Approach to Assessment
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/902716
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As director of institutional research and assessment at a small, private liberal arts college, I realize that I occupy a different position than others who may think about assessment in a narrower way as opposed to a more expansive view of assessment as one element of the data ecosystem that points toward student and institutional success.The conversation about assessment and what counts for assessment including grades has been happening for a long time and continues. In his new article David Eubanks argues that grades and learning can be a way to think about subject mastery and student learning. While I disagree with the structure of the argument, I am not willing to say that grades do not provide useful feedback
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/565/image/coversmallAnother Silo Isn’t the Answer: A Collaborative Approach to Assessment2023-07-24text/htmlen-USAnother Silo Isn’t the Answer: A Collaborative Approach to Assessment2023-07-242023TWOProject MUSE®82792026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002023-07-24The Devil Is in the Details: A Response to Eubanks
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/902717
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David Eubanks has lent his methodological prowess and creative, critical thinking to the field repeatedly over the course of his career at multiple institutions for the betterment of the assessment professional and higher education writ large (e.g., Eubanks et al., 2022). His latest thoughtful thought-exercise, “Grades and Learning,” is well worth a deep read. He rightly points out that the dynamic tension between accountability and improvement (Ewell, 1987, 2009) remains a powerful variable in our consideration of the purpose and ultimately the design of our assessment protocols. His critique of accreditional processes serves to powerfully illustrate this tension. Within the article, Eubanks again calls out the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/565/image/coversmallThe Devil Is in the Details: A Response to Eubanks2023-07-24text/htmlen-USThe Devil Is in the Details: A Response to Eubanks2023-07-242023TWOProject MUSE®427292026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002023-07-24Continuing the Conversation
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/902718
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I’m grateful to the editors for making this edition of JAIE about grades and learning happen. Many thanks as well to the authors of the thoughtful replies, who took the time to reflect and respond to the ideas in the lead article.As Charlie and Kathy suggest in their response, it is bizarre that in this new age of data science we are having a debate about whether grades are worth analyzing. I chose this project deliberately to challenge the most damaging belief in assessment reporting: that grades are such poor measures of learning that we shouldn’t waste our time on them. The first article taking up that challenge, with coauthors A. J. Good and Megan Schramm-Possinger, surveyed grade reliability (Eubanks et al.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/565/image/coversmallContinuing the Conversation2023-07-24text/htmlen-USContinuing the Conversation2023-07-242023TWOProject MUSE®241692026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002023-07-24“With the Kindness Shown to Me”: Assessing Remote Teaching and Learning Strategies in a Time of Pandemic
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/902719
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University Studies, Portland State University’s signature General Education program, grounds well-established assessment practices within a commitment to authentic faculty support based in the reciprocal relationships of practitioners offering mutually beneficial pedagogical aid. With the arrival of COVID-19 in our world and remote learning in our institutions, we, like teaching and learning professionals at countless institutions, recognized that our usual end-of-year assessment processes (which, for our program, meant student e-portfolio and course portfolio review using faculty-developed rubrics, supplemented by data collected through course evaluation instruments intentionally aligned to program learning goals
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/565/image/coversmall“With the Kindness Shown to Me”: Assessing Remote Teaching and Learning Strategies in a Time of Pandemic2023-07-24text/htmlen-US“With the Kindness Shown to Me”: Assessing Remote Teaching and Learning Strategies in a Time of Pandemic2023-07-242023TWOProject MUSE®791482026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002023-07-24Integration of Data Analytics Into the Engineering Probability Course: Direct and Indirect Assessment Studies
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/902720
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Outcomes assessments in undergraduate courses are essential in determining the success and effectiveness of instructional methods (Luce & Kirnan, 2016; Acosta-Gonzaga & Walet, 2018). Assessments make it possible for colleges and schools to ensure that the goals of a specific program are met, and students have attained accepted levels of proficiencies in the chosen fields of study. The need for assessment becomes more important when an existing course is revamped or updated. I took the initiative a couple of years ago to update the course in probability for the students pursuing baccalaureate degrees in electrical engineering and computer engineering. While the contents in the probability and statistics revolve
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/565/image/coversmallIntegration of Data Analytics Into the Engineering Probability Course: Direct and Indirect Assessment Studies2023-07-24text/htmlen-USIntegration of Data Analytics Into the Engineering Probability Course: Direct and Indirect Assessment Studies2023-07-242023TWOProject MUSE®687472026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002023-07-24Editors’ Note
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/902721
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We still vividly remember the kerfuffle created in higher education circles when the Spellings Report was published in 2006 (Commission on the Future of Higher Education, 2006). It was an attempt to create a “no child left behind” system within higher education on the premise that higher education was failing our students. Through financial aid and other subsidies, the government provides substantial support for students in higher education. Under the argument of the Spellings Report, course grades and GPA were, however, insufficient evidence for accountability. Consequently, accreditors - institutional and programmatic - required evidence of student learning in key general objectives like critical thinking and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/565/image/coversmallEditors’ Note2023-07-24text/htmlen-USEditors’ Note2023-07-242023TWOProject MUSE®237832026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002023-07-24