Contemporary students have a varied set of needs--the "lifecycle" of a typical student may no longer be 4 years of continuous enrollment between the ages of 18 and 22, and many students bring rich and varied experiences with them to college. As institutions strive to allocate resources in ways that provide the most benefit to student…

This chapter discusses principles that support using data about teaching and learning and offers several strategies particularly well suited for use by institutional researchers at small colleges in helping faculty, staff, and administrators use data on student learning for improvement.