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The importance of assessment
According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, a group of 90 colleges and universities has signed a statement affirming the importance of assessing how well students achieve the aims of a liberal arts education. The statement, sponsored by the Consortium on Financing Higher Education, maintains that all schools have a responsibility to determine whether or not students are developing the critical thinking, communication skills, and knowledge that higher education is supposed to provide. Our institutions of higher learning have diverse missions and characteristics, but share a common goal of cultivating graduates who will be conscientious citizens and lifelong learners.
This assessment, according to the statement, can help in a number of ways: supporting ideas about the undergraduate curriculum, help faculty revise and update courses, provide insight into long-term educational effects, and help institutions learn from each other. This is an encouraging sign amidst widespread concern that colleges and universities are not providing students with a rigorous liberal arts education. ACTA encourages trustees to take an active role in formulating assessments of student learning aimed at determining how well their institutions are fulfilling their educational mission -- as the regents of the University of Colorado did recently.
Posted by Sandra E. Czelusniak on November 21, 2008 at November 21, 2008 04:59 PM
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