A Scholarly Approach to Assessing Learning

Excerpt: Assessing learning in higher education is what faculty do. We teach, our students learn, and we check their learning to ensure that they are, indeed, grasping what we want them to understand. Assessment of learning is nothing new, and faculty do it better than most. But mention the word “assessment” in a gathering of faculty colleagues, and you are likely to start a stampede away from you. Why is this? Why is something that is such an integral part of teaching and learning considered anathema?