Insider Higher Ed reports on a meeting of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, in which assessing student outcomes was discussed. I’ll let you read the article yourself, but one of their conclusions was:
It might be possible, and could be valuable, for humanists to reach broad agreement on the skills, abilities, and knowledge they might seek to instill in their students, and that agreement on those goals might be a starting point for identifying effective ways to measure how well students have mastered those outcomes.
Notice the words “might” and “possible,” which express considerable reservations.
So, how should student outcomes in the humanities be assessed? Or can they be assessed? And what sorts of outcomes should be sought in the first place?
The former Associate Director for the Emerging Scholars Network, Micheal lives in Cincinnati with his wife and three children and works as a web manager for a national storage and organization company. He writes about work, vocation, and finding meaning in what you do at No Small Actors.