Assessment best serves as a strategy for improving student learning when it provides continual feedback on academic performance to students. Assessment means defining goals for their learning that students can understand; designing performances that provide students with multiple opportunities to achieve these goals; and defining criteria to judge student performance that can be shared with them so that they can meet faculty expectations.

It is not enough for a teacher to know excellence when he or she sees it; students need to be empowered both to recognize excellence and consciously aim for it.

The following are some links on the importance of assessment to a university’s mission and the theory and practice of assessment to enhance academic excellence:

• Higher Learning Commission Statement on Assessment of Student Learning
• Assessment as Learning at Alverno College
• Assessment Bibiliography