Guiding Principles

Gettysburg College strives to adhere to the Nine Principles of Good Practice for Assessing Student Learning articulated by the former American Association for Higher Education (AAHE):

• The assessment of student learning begins with educational values.
• Assessment is most effective when it reflects an understanding of learning as multidimensional, integrated, and revealed in performance over time.
• Assessment works best when the program it seeks to improve has clear, explicitly stated purposes.
• Assessment requires attention to outcomes but also and equally to the experiences that lead to those outcomes.
• Assessment works best when it is ongoing not episodic.
• Assessment fosters wider improvement when representatives from across the educational community are involved.
• Assessment makes a difference when it begins with issues of use and illuminates questions that people really care about.
• Assessment is most likely to lead to improvement when it is part of a larger set of conditions that promote change.

• Through assessment, educators meet responsibilities to students and to the public.