Assessment fosters wider improvement when representatives from across the educational community are involved . Student learning is a campus-wide responsibility, and assessment is a way of enacting that responsibility. Thus, while assessment efforts may start small, the aim over time is to involve people from across the educational community. Faculty play an especially important role, but assessment s questions can t be fully addressed without participation by student-affairs educators, librarians, administrators, and students. Assessment is most likely to lead to improvement when it is part of a larger set of conditions that promote change.
Assessment alone changes little.
Its greatest contribution comes on campuses where the quality of teaching and learning is visibly valued and worked at. On such campuses, information about learning outcomes is seen as an integral part of decision making, and avidly sought. Through assessment, educators meet responsibilities to students and to the public . There is a compelling public stake in education. As educators, we have a responsibility to the publics that support or depend on us to provide information about the ways in which our students meet goals and expectations.