Introduction: 

This initiative from AAC&U provides the following useful components for assessment of student learning outcomes: 

Value Rubrics
  • From 2007 to 2009, teams of faculty experts representing colleges and universities across the United States worked together to develop 16 VALUE rubrics. The rubrics articulate fundamental criteria for the related learning outcomes and include performance descriptors demonstrating progressively more sophisticated levels of attainment. Utilized by more than 5,600 discrete organizations across 142 countries, the VALUE rubrics have made an essential contribution to the dialogue on the assessment of college learning.
Value Scoring Collaborative 
  • The VALUE Scoring Collaborative (formerly the VALUE Institute) provides a resource for higher education programs, states, and institutions to document, report, and use evidence on learning outcomes to improve student success. AAC&U invites higher education organizations to support the Collaborative by collecting samples of student work, transferring these artifacts and assignments to the digital depository, and having VALUE Scoring Collaborative experts score them using the VALUE rubrics.
Essential Learning Outcomes (ELOs)
  • The VALUE rubrics articulate basic criteria for each ELO with performance guidelines demonstrating progressively more sophisticated levels of achievement. Educators can translate the ELOs laid out in each VALUE rubric into the language of individual courses, disciplines, and campuses. Beginning in school, and continuing at successively higher levels across their college studies, students should prepare for twenty-first-century challenges by gaining:
  1. Knowledge of Human Cultures and the Physical and Natural World
  2. Intellectual and Practical Skills
  3. Personal and Social Responsibility
  4. Integrative and Applied Learning

Visit AAC&U VALUES Initiative Website to view all the tools and resources available.