The University of Toledo

Welcome!

Assessment is an ongoing process aimed at understanding and improving student learning.  It involves:

• making our expectations explicit and public
• setting appropriate criteria and high standards for learning quality
• systematically gathering, analyzing, and interpreting evidence to determine how well performance matches those expectations and standards
• using the resulting information to document, explain, and improve performance

When it is embedded effectively within larger institutional systems, assessment can help us:

• focus our collective attention
• examine our assumptions
• create a shared academic culture dedicated to assuring and improving the quality of higher education

(Thomas A. Angelo, AAHE Bulletin, November 1995, v.48, n.3, p.7)

Culture of assessment is "the predominating attitudes and behaviors that characterize the functioning of an institution [and] support the assessment of student learning outcomes", including these fifteen elements.

(Wendy Weiner, Academe Online, 2009)