Planning and Assessment in Higher Education: Demonstrating Institutional Effectiveness

by Michael F. Middaugh

PLANNING AND ASSESSMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION Demonstrating Institutional EffectivenessIn this era of increasing pressure on higher education institutions for accountability, Planning and Assessment in Higher Education is an essential resource for college and university leaders and staff charged with the task of providing evidence of institutional effectiveness. Michael F. Middaugh, a noted expert in the field, shows how colleges and universities can successfully measure student learning and institutional effectiveness and use these results to create more efficient communications with both internal and external constituencies as well as promote institutional effectiveness to support student learning."How can the assessment of institutional effectiveness be used to provide a solid foundation for planning? Middaugh has crafted a comprehensive, practical guide that also explains what accrediting agencies really want and need to know about these topics." --Elizabeth H. Sibolski, executive vice president, Middle States Commission on Higher Education"Only Michael Middaugh, the unquestioned national leader in this field, could write such a lucid overview of how to make institutional assessment and planning really work as a tool rather than as a tedious requirement. He helped invent and shape the focus of national assessment rubrics and now offers his insights into how to make them work for your institution." --John C. Cavanaugh, chancellor, Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education"Middaugh provides extremely helpful and practical guidance and insights on how colleges and universities can use assessment tools and frameworks to improve both academic programs and administrative operations. A valuable and timely book for all higher education leaders." --James P. Honan, senior lecturer on education, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Genres: Research, Reference, Education

256 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 30, 2009

Reviews

[MJ James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Planning and Assessment in Higher Education: Demonstrating Institutional Effectiveness is an applied manual on implementing assessment in higher education. It approaches assessment from a practical standpoint including the impact of assessment on multiple aspects and from multiple perspectives in higher education.

The chapters on assessing student life are well thought out and extremely practical. They contain a wealth of information that would be useful for universities that are in various stages of assessment gathering. The chapters on course assessment is less applied. However, Middaugh does include a vast amount of resources to expand your knowledge in course assessment.

One of the strengths of the book is that includes practical information about accreditation, although most specific examples are focused on the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. There is also a huge slant towards using Institutional Research data for assessment purposes. This is great if your university is not utilizing this data, but not as helpful if that is all that your university utilizes.

I would not consider Planning and Assessment in Higher Education to be the only resource that a university needs. Nor does it ever try to be. It is a useful guide that provides a wealth of other resources to pursue depending on the specific need of your university. It is also extremely well written and easy to read. The way Middaugh explained some items, items that I had previously worked on, gave me a fresh understanding of the usefulness and potential.

[Molly Durava · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was helpful for some of my assessment work, but really focused more on Institutional Effectiveness, which was also interesting.

[Ciji Ann Heiser · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book provided a comprehensive overview of measuring institutional effectiveness looking at faculty measures, student learning measures, and administrative measures. The author cites multiple studies that provide broad overarching measures and provides references for materials that offer more detailed direct measures of efficiency and student learning.

[Gaetan T. Giannini]

Considering the subject, not bad so far.