Implementing outcomes assessment : promise and perils

Abstract

The assessment planing committee is usually not granted the luxury of suficient time to satisfactorally resolve all its questions and concerns. The pressure to do something is too great to permit long delays in beginning to collect some kind of data on program effectiveness. We have used ad hoc procedures and invalid intruments because we have not had the time to seek a strong theoretical base for our work. It is time now, near the And of the initial decade of implementation, to take stock of of where we have been, what we have accomplished, and where we should go next in strengthening our approaches to assessment. Several of the authors inthis volume of New Dirctions for Institutional Research have written previously about the promise of reassessment. We have not lost sight of that feature. But herein optimism is tempered with realism. Along with the promise, some of the perils surrounding assessment are identified and discused. This is the 59th issue of New Directions for Institutional Research. For more information on the series, please see the Journals and Periodical page.

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