Full Description
In a higher education landscape that seems to be increasingly focused on accreditation and accountability, administrators, faculty, and staff in higher education institutions expend considerable resources engaging in assessment activities in response to the demands of compliance-oriented external forces. Beyond Accreditation: Designing and Implementing Meaningful Quality Assurance and Continuous Improvement Systems presents an alternative paradigm for consideration: the primary purpose of assessment systems should be to provide program improvement, with the resulting data serving as supporting evidence for compliance-oriented requests.
The book is intended to provide a foundation of background knowledge to empower programs, regardless of size or disciplinary context, to engage in the processes associated with assessment in pursuit of continuous improvement. It supplies data and other information in three distinct ways throughout the book. In some chapters, candid dialogues between the authors are presented in a conversational tone. In others, a more philosophical and sometimes historical perspective provides background knowledge informing why certain things are done and the purposes those activities serve. The remaining chapters present a practical approach to engaging in assessment, from identifying signature assessments to analyzing and reporting on data, all within the overarching context of designing an assessment system that serves continuous improvement efforts.
The accountability mindset that has taken hold in education, and in higher education in particular, has fostered a view of assessment as a complicated, challenging, and burdensome enterprise that is done to us in pursuit of compliance. Throughout the book, assessment is presented as something to be done in pursuit of continuous improvement. The authors hope that its contents prove useful to anyone in search of assistance in these efforts.
Perfect for courses such as: Educational Program Evaluation; Teacher Education; Education Policy; Teacher Education Policy; and Human Resources in Education.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter 1. Author Dialogue: Culture of Assessment for Continuous Improvement
Chapter 2. Understanding Evidence, Assessment, and Continuous Improvement
Chapter 3. Author Dialogue: Everything and the Kitchen Sink
Chapter 4. Understanding and Reporting Data
Chapter 5. Author Dialogue: Data Quality
Chapter 6. Understanding Validity
Chapter 7. Understanding Reliability
Chapter 8. Understanding Fairness
Chapter 9. Understanding Trustworthiness
Chapter 10. Author Dialogue: Signature Assessment Instruments
Chapter 11. Constructing or Identifying Signature Assessment Instruments
Chapter 12. Investigating Data Quality
Chapter 13. Author Dialogue: Data Management Systems vs. Assessment Systems
Chapter 14. Designing an Assessment System
Chapter 15. Author Dialogue: Data Reporting and Presentation
Chapter 16. Data Analysis, Reporting, and Visualization
Chapter 17. Author Dialogue: Decision-Making
Chapter 18. Making the Case for Continuous Improvement
Chapter 19. Meta-Assessment
Glossary
About the Authors
Index
