Upper Peninsula Teaching & Learning Conference - 2026

Assessment requirements in universities have become nearly universal across higher education institutions. Evaluation efforts typically focus on documenting student and program learning outcomes. Despite being framed as tools to enhance educational quality, decades of assessment efforts strongly suggest that this goal is not being effectively achieved. Despite nearly 40 years of higher education assessment activity, even assessment professionals have conceded that there is minimal evidence demonstrating that assessment has led to improved student learning outcomes. While substantial amounts of assessment data have been gathered and archived, critics suggest that many of these findings are of questionable quality and limited usefulness. Some faculty critics have concluded that the time devoted to the end-of-semester exercise of organizing, documenting, and reporting student learning outcomes occurs at the expense of more meaningful student-centered advising activities,   course development, improved instructional strategies, and scholarly work.Assessment issues reflect broader shifts in higher education, notably corporatization and increased administrative oversight. Assessment professionals have often implemented behavioral and educational measurement methods without adhering to key principles, leading to ongoing data quality issues. As a result, current assessment measures may lack reliability and validity, reducing their credibility and utility Meanwhile, higher education assessment has become a distinct profession with its own institutions. The assessment community rarely acknowledges research from the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Alternative approaches to learning outcomes assessment, such as student-centered qualitative methods and formative assessment, will also be presented and discussed.