EDITOR’S NOTES

This is the latest volume in the New Directions for Institutional Research(NDIR) Assessment Series. In order to accommodate the new series andwith the encouragement of the Association for Institutional Research, NDIRhas expanded from four volumes per year to five. Each year these volumesaddress and illuminate a particular aspect within the complicated topic ofassessment. The Assessment Supplement is designed for higher educationprofessionals who seek a fuller understanding of student outcomes assess-ment and its role in institutional effectiveness.

The volume summarizes the best of what we know about assessing stu-dent outcomes. Each chapter provides a foundation for examining the why,who, what, and how of assessment. Few other topics are more importantand complicated than outcomes assessment. The needs of students and theareas of their learning vary highly among institutions and degree programs.Students are diverse, and the dimensions of the learning processes in Amer-ican higher education are extremely complex. Thus, assessing student per-formance is complex and, hence, difficult to summarize.

This volume has direct linkages to several courses in Penn State’s onlineInstitutional Research Certificate program. The volume as a whole is designedto support the lessons in Assessing Student Outcomes and Evaluating AcademicPrograms. Chapters One through Four draw on some of the assessment andevaluation readings and materials covered in selected units of IR Foundationsand Fundamentals. This volume also discusses relevant literature and theoriesof student outcomes that are contained in Studying Students and StudentAffairs, as well as in the Assessment and Foundations courses. Persistence mod-els and retention theories identified in these courses and this NDIR volumeare relevant also to Conducting Enrollment Management Studies. Finally, PennState’s course in Research Design, with its emphasis on measurement issuesand survey research, provides an analytical foundation for any assessmentactivity. Thus, readers will find that this NDIR volume provides the intellec-tual foundation and supporting resources for an array of domains that are central to professional institutional research practice in higher education.

We need to place the assessment journey within a context and withinthe environment that is heavily shaping what we do. Thus, Chapter Oneexamines why assessment is so important. The internal need for improve-ment is even greater than the external demands for accountability, accredi-tation, and performance reporting, but together they provide bothinspirational and pragmatic foundations for assessing student outcomes. InChapter Two, I propose a model for assessing institutional effectiveness. The

1NEW DIRECTIONS FOR INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH, Assessment Supplement 2009, Spring 2010 © Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) • DOI: 10.1002/ir.326

2 ASSESSING STUDENT OUTCOMES: WHY, WHO, WHAT, HOW?

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH • DOI: 10.1002/ir

five parts of the model summarize the steps for evaluating institutions, pro-grams, faculty, and students. In recent years, evidence of student outcomeshas become one of the key indicators of institutional effectiveness, especiallyas it is viewed by accrediting associations, as well as by many boards oftrustees and state higher education governing boards.

Chapters Three and Four discuss some common campus obstacles toassessment implementation and suggest ways to overcome them. ChapterThree is a reprint of Patrick Terenzini’s “Assessment with Open Eyes,” alandmark discussion of the pitfalls of assessing student outcomes, publishedin 1989 in the Journal of Higher Education. In my opinion, it is the mostvaluable 20 pages ever written on this topic. In Chapter Four, I extend thisdiscussion with some practical suggestions derived from assessment expe-riences at a research university.

The remaining chapters dive more completely into assessment by exam-ining the what and how of this topic, including several outcomes assessmentmodels. Chapters Five through Eight examine the core academic outcomes:basic skills, general education, attainment in the major, and personal growth.In Chapter Nine, we examine alumni studies, regarded by many as the mostcost-effective way to collect useful assessment information.

Chapter Ten takes a page from Penn State’s research design course anddiscusses several data and measurement issues: the uses of standardized test-ing versus self-reported measures, attributing causality and estimatingunique effects, dealing with missing data, and weighting data. ChapterEleven concludes the volume by summarizing some effective disseminationand reporting strategies once assessment findings are in hand. This chapterreviews some best practices for reporting research results to diverse audi-ences and addresses written, visual, and verbal presentations.

Each chapter in this volume lists supplementary reading and Web linksthat provide additional information to explore each topic in greater depth.I am grateful to my graduate students for their many contributions to thisvolume and to my thinking about outcomes assessment over the years.

J. Fredericks VolkweinEditor

J. FREDERICKS VOLKWEIN is emeritus professor of higher education at The Penn-sylvania State University and a former director of the Center for the Study ofHigher Education.