Please note that the assessment approach presented below is not intended to fully assess each desired outcome, but rather to begin to assess components of each outcome as made possible by a campus’s existing data.
Many schools administer one or more of the following surveys to their students. Since the surveys are designed to gather demographic information as well as to provide an overall snapshot of students’ experiences in college, the instruments are not strictly focused on assessing liberal arts education outcomes. Nevertheless, the often "shelved" data from the surveys can provide a quick and cost-effective first glimpse into student outcomes. Schools can subsequently gather additional information to investigate desired outcomes in more depth.
The links below illustrate how one might use commonly administered surveys to assess students’ development in seven desirable liberal arts education outcomes. Each link takes you to a list of relevant excerpts from various assessment surveys. We do not intend these seven to represent the only desirable liberal arts educational outcomes. Nor do we believe these outcomes are limited to liberal arts education. They do, however, represent outcomes historically claimed for liberal arts education. The Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts is assessing these particular outcomes in the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education. For simplicity, the lists are restricted to the most relevant questions from each survey. Again, the approach presented here only provides a first glimpse and should not be thought of as a comprehensive assessment approach.
Effective Reasoning and Problem Solving
Inclination to Inquire and Lifelong Learning