The National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment has a mission to make learning outcomes usable and transparent. Toward that end, it created and made available to colleges and universities the NILOA Transparency Framework. NILOA’s website featured several early and effective adopters, including Kalamazoo College.

Says Provost Mickey McDonald: “The College incorporated (with permission) some of the frameworks from NILOA and used some of the educational quality assurance framework outlined by Peter Ewell in his book Making the Grade.” Influence of the NILOA framework is evident on K’s Educational Quality Assessment website. And a portion of that website, “Elements of Educational Quality,” borrows from Ewell’s framework; student learning outcomes is central, but not the only point of focus for quality assurance at K.

McDonald adds, “We started work about three years ago with the Academic Affairs Committee of the Board about better understanding their role in Educational Quality Assessment. We have touched on this at nearly every board meeting since, and we wrap up each year with an executive summary of EQA work done that year.”