The leaders of several higher-education associations and foundations have agreed to form a new alliance to promote the measurement and improvement of student learning at colleges.

The higher-education leaders agreed to formally establish the new alliance late last week, at a conference on student learning held at Duke University by the Teagle and Spencer Foundations.

W. Robert Connor, the Teagle Foundation’s president, said key players in the effort had been meeting since last spring to discuss how to get colleges and their faculty members to take up a call to action on student learning issued by the Association of American Colleges and Universities and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation in January. Concerned that “we have all seen statements come out and nothing happen,” those involved with the meetings resolved last week to set up the alliance to coordinate efforts by its member groups to systematically improve teaching at colleges, Mr. Connor said. The alliance hopes to bring about measurable improvements in student learning within three to five years.

Among those involved in the effort are Roger Benjamin, president of the Council for Aid to Education, and Richard Hersh, a senior fellow at that group; Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education; Judith S. Eaton, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation; Richard Ekman, president of the Council of Independent Colleges; Peter Ewell, vice president of the National Center for Higher Education; Carol Geary Schneider, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and representatives of the Lumina, Carnegie, and Teagle Foundations.

Ms. Broad, of the American Council on Education, described the alliance as “a group of individuals and organizations that believe that the time has come for us to build a sustained effort to improve undergraduate education” by developing “robust means of assessing learning outcomes.” She said the alliance would issue reports and hold summits and professional-development conferences to try “to make good ideas viral” and to move research on best practices in teaching and assessment into the classroom, where it will be “owned by the faculty and used in a systematic way.” —Peter Schmidt