October 27, 2006

Making an Art Form of Assessment

A small women's college has become a model for determining what students have learned

By Burton Bollag

For many parents and legislators, the bottom line of a college education is what a student learns. Colleges struggle to find the best way to assess student learning and then communicate the results to outsiders. Increasingly, calls are heard for standardized tests to measure college students' performance and to be able to compare institutions' educations with one another.

As that push continues, Alverno College, a small Catholic women's college here, has been a surprising mecca for