This article raises questions about the use of needs assessment by those seeking to improve the performance of organizations and individuals. While the discrepancy model of needs assessment has enjoyed a long history and is widely accepted, the author states that it has several undesirable consequences in terms of its impact. This article offers…

This article describes the synthesis of the NCATE PDS Standards, the NAPDS Nine Essentials and the CAEP Standards to create a rubric that can be used to help PDS stakeholders develop, refine, and evaluate their partnerships. Implications and future directions on how to use the rubric are also shared.

In recent times, higher education institutions have paid increasing attention to the views of students to obtain feedback on their experience of learning and teaching through internal surveys. This article reviews research in the field and reports on practices in other Australian universities. Findings demonstrate that while student feedback is…

This research examines the practices used in assessing students' competencies in the European Higher Education Area. The main objective is to describe the current situation in the Spanish universities, concentrating upon the following questions: what are the most common assessment practices used by academics; how do university academics evaluate…

Corporate universities have emerged as a mechanism for providing companies with a wide variety of training and development activities. They are a recent but under-researched phenomenon, and given their substantial budgets, it might be expected that they would wish to evaluate what they do. The authors explore the evaluation practices of six…

"Building Institutional Capacity for Data-Informed Decision Making" is the third installment of the Cutting Edge series, which aims to help colleges engage faculty, scale successful interventions, and create a strong culture of evidence through use of data to strengthen their institutional change and student success efforts. Though the…

Achieving the Dream colleges engage in a process of institutional improvement to increase student success. A central component of this process is engaging internal and external stakeholders to help develop and implement interventions or changes in programs and services that improve student success. To determine whether these interventions do…

This document was developed by the Mid-South Regional Resource Center (MSRRC) and is designed to be used as an assessment of State systems by State Part B and Part C staff and their stakeholders. It provides a detailed process for State Education Agencies (SEA) and Lead Agencies (LA) to follow that will guide improvement efforts relative to the…

Assessment is generally seen as one of the key challenges in the field of self-access learning (Gardner & Miller, 1999; Champagne et al., 2001; Lai, 2001; Kinoshita Thomson, 1996). Many researchers and practitioners point to difficulties with assessing language gains in an environment in which variables cannot comprehensively be controlled…

Austin Community College contracted with MGT of America, Inc. in spring 1999 to develop a peer and benchmark (best) practices analysis on key indicators. These indicators were updated in spring 2002 using data from eight Texas community colleges and four non-Texas institutions that represent large, comprehensive, urban community colleges, similar…