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Liberal education aims to empower students by providing broad knowledge across various fields as well as in-depth study in specific areas of interest. It also helps develop skills like communication, problem solving, and applying knowledge to real-world settings. In response, the Association of American Colleges and Universities launched the Liberal Education and America's Promise initiative to articulate expectations for students' liberal learning through Essential Learning Outcomes. They also developed VALUE rubrics to assess student work and progress in achieving these outcomes. The rubrics translate the Essential Learning Outcomes into attributes and achievement levels to allow broad assessment of student work across institutions.

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18 views

Val Assess

Liberal education aims to empower students by providing broad knowledge across various fields as well as in-depth study in specific areas of interest. It also helps develop skills like communication, problem solving, and applying knowledge to real-world settings. In response, the Association of American Colleges and Universities launched the Liberal Education and America's Promise initiative to articulate expectations for students' liberal learning through Essential Learning Outcomes. They also developed VALUE rubrics to assess student work and progress in achieving these outcomes. The rubrics translate the Essential Learning Outcomes into attributes and achievement levels to allow broad assessment of student work across institutions.

Uploaded by

Minux
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Introduction

Liberal Education is an approach to learning that empowers individuals and prepares them
to deal with complexity, diversity, and change. It provides students with broad knowledge
of the wider world (e.g., science, culture, and society) as well as in-depth study in a specific
area of interest. A liberal education helps students develop a sense of social responsibility,
as well as strong and transferable intellectual and practical skills such as communication,
analytical and problem-solving skills, and a demonstrated ability to apply knowledge and
skills in real-world settings.
Association of American Colleges and Universities,
What Is a 21st-Century Liberal Education?

Embracing a twenty-first-century definition of liberal education, the Association of


American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) in 2005 launched a major national
initiative called Liberal Education and Americas Promise, or LEAP. One
significant achievement of the LEAP initiative is the development of the
One significant achievement
LEAP Essential Learning Outcomes, representing contemporary higher
of the LEAP initiative is the
educations expectations for all students liberal learning (see fig. 1). In 2007,
development of the LEAP
AAC&U launched the Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate
Education (VALUE) project in order to develop an approach to assessing
Essential Learning Outcomes,
student progress in achieving the LEAP Essential Learning Outcomes.
representing contemporary
This effort resulted in the creation of the VALUE rubrics, which effectively
higher educations expectatranslate the LEAP Essential Learning Outcomes into sixteen sets of corresponding attributes and levels of achievement. Faculty and other educators
tions for all students
now are using the VALUE rubrics to assess a broad range of student work
liberal learning.
produced in both general education and major programs of study.
The identification of the LEAP Essential Learning Outcomes represents
a first in American higher education. For the first time, faculty and other educational
professionals from across representative two-year and four-year colleges and universities
collaborated to articulate what contemporary higher education institutions commonly
expect students to demonstrate as a result of a liberal education. Of even greater national
significance is the collaborative nature of the development of the aligned VALUE
rubrics and the mainstreaming of their criteria and standards of judgment.
To understand the national significance of the VALUE approach to the assessment of students liberal learning, it is necessary to frame this development within
a broader context. To that end, chapter 1 examines the nexus between the nations
current and projected economic and social needs, on the one hand, and higher educations role in graduating more students who have been truly prepared to address those
needs, on the other.
Chapter 2 identifies major challenges facing colleges and universities in the twenty-first century. These include challenges related to the broad demographic spread of
todays student bodies and the gaps in student achievement and degree completion
across that spread, as well as challenges related to the multiple and often highly individualistic degree pathways students pursue or stitch together based on transfer of
credits from multiple degree-offering institutions or other educational providers.

Assessment That Works | 1

Figure 1.

The LEAP Essential Learning Outcomes

Beginning in school, and continuing at successively higher levels across their college studies,
students should prepare for twenty-first-century challenges by gaining:

Knowledge of Human Cultures and the Physical and Natural World


Through study in the sciences and mathematics, social sciences, humanities, histories,
languages, and the arts
Focused by engagement with big questions, both contemporary and enduring

Intellectual and Practical Skills, including


Inquiry and analysis
Critical and creative thinking
Written and oral communication
Quantitative literacy
Information literacy
Teamwork and problem solving
Practiced extensively, across the curriculum, in the context of progressively
more challenging problems, projects, and standards for performance
Personal and Social Responsibility, including
Civic knowledge and engagementlocal and global
Intercultural knowledge and competence
Ethical reasoning and action
Foundations and skills for lifelong learning
Anchored through active involvement with diverse communities and
real-world challenges
Integrative and Applied Learning, including
Synthesis and advanced accomplishment across general and specialized studies
Demonstrated through the application of knowledge, skills, and responsibilities
to new settings and complex problems
NOTE: This listing was developed through a multiyear dialogue with employers and with hundreds of colleges and
universities about needed goals for student learning; analysis of a long series of recommendations and reports from
the business community; and analysis of the accreditation requirements for engineering, business, nursing, and
teacher education. For more information, see Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), College
Learning for the New Global Century: A Report from the National Leadership Council for Liberal Education and
Americas Promise (Washington, DC: AAC&U, 2007); The LEAP Vision for Learning: Outcomes, Practices, Impact,
andEmployers Views (Washington, DC: AAC&U, 2011); or visit www.aacu.org/leap.

2 | Association of American Colleges and Universities

Within the context of chapters 1 and 2, chapter 3 focuses on AAC&Us turn-ofthe-century call for a recalibration of liberal education curricula and educational
practices to educate all students to high levels of achievement. That call was intended
to draw attention to the need to close persistent achievement gaps across diverse student populations within higher education. Chapter 4 focuses on the results of two
initiatives launched in response to that call: (1) the development of a set of national
liberal learning outcomes, the LEAP Essential Learning Outcomes, and (2) the aligned
set of national criteria and standards of judgment to score student work demonstrating those outcomes, the VALUE rubrics.
Through a series of representative case studies, chapters 5 and 6 illustrate how
the VALUE approach to assessment has affected campuses by engaging faculty and
other educators in broad discussions about how to foster and sustain student learning
beyond the individual course and how to engage students in, and hold them responsible for, demonstrating and documenting their liberal learning. The case studies
indicate the potential scalability of VALUEacross higher education, beyond individual campusesas an equitable means of scoring student work and reporting results
for both internal and external audiences.
Finally, chapter 7 challenges all colleges, universities, and other educational providers to make the VALUE approach to assessment a nationally visible and shared
core commitment. Such a commitment would promote student achievement of the
outcomes of a quality liberal education and demonstrate institutional accountability.
At the same time, this commitment would preserve the distinctive mission, purposes,
core academic values, and educational practices of individual institutions.

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