ABSTRACT
Since the twentieth century, assessment has played an increasingly important role in American higher education. Locally developed assessments are created internally by members of an academic program to measure student learning tied to specific programmatic learning outcomes. Assessment can also serve different purposes, measure different levels of achievement, and take different forms. Indirect assessments may also include general indicators of learning such as graduation rates, retention rates, grades, and enrollment. This chapter focuses on direct assessments, and begins by identifying and explaining the different types of direct assessments most commonly used in higher education. It explores development, administration, and scoring with a special emphasis on introducing approaches that will minimize sources of error. The chapter introduces a special project under way to evaluate the Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education rubrics under the leadership of the Association of American Colleges & Universities.
