From assessment to good teaching

I attended an assessment conference last week. That sounded pretty mind-numbing, and most of the presentations were (though the food was excellent!). But then somewhere in the three days, the focus shifted from "assessment" to helping students learn. That's what I needed to hear.

My general perspective has been that assessment is primarily educational bureaucracy from an accrediting agency (HLC) designed to keep other educational bureaucracies (state and federal government) from hounding us even more. But the new HLC criteria and much of what I heard at the conference was much more focused on how do we really help students get better. If by doing that we also happen to satisfy outside agencies looking for "accountability," great. But that's not the main concern--good teaching is. Amen.

Here's an example of how that approach seems to be going well at Alverno - http://insidehighered.com/views/2007/08/14/engelmann.