AALHE 2018 Annual Conference

Creating and maintaining a campus culture that values assessment is among the most critical responsibilities assessment professionals accept. Paramount to the creation of an effective culture of any nature is the development of an understood, shared language among all stakeholders. One major finding from a survey conducted by the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment in 2017 revealed that effective communication about student learning is both an opportunity and a challenge for assessment professionals (Jankowski, Timmer, Kinzie, & Kuh, 2018). Professionals are tasked, implicitly, and increasingly explicitly, with fostering institutional cultures which value student learning outcomes assessment. This symposium will explore the use of language as a tool to foster assessment cultures, from the perspective of three markedly different institutions.

The first portion of the symposium will include an overview of the topic, as well as small and large group discussions with attendees. Following this introduction, each of the presenters will provide their experiences at their institutions in a case study format. The symposium will end with a summary and a discussion of future directions with attention paid to scholarship needs and opportunities in this area.