The document discusses the VALUE (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education) project, which developed 15 rubrics to assess student learning outcomes across institutions. It details the project activities, outcomes developed, commonalities among the rubrics, and studies demonstrating the rubrics' validity, usability, and reliability. Institutions have widely adopted the rubrics to assess writing, critical thinking, civic engagement, and other outcomes, and the results are helping to improve student learning.

1. Show Me the Learning: Valid
Assessment of Learning in
Undergraduate Education (VALUE)
Terrel L. Rhodes
Association of American Colleges and Universities
WASC Resource Fair
January 2012

2. Survey Results Are
Consistent
Everyone – business, policy makers, faculty,
students - wants better learning AND
better information, compelling evidence on what
students know and are able to do… whether for
personal development, program assessment,
accreditation or hiring a new employee.

3. Major VALUE Project
Activities
• National advisory board [12 members]
• Rubric collection and creation of 15 metarubrics
by teams [over 100 individual faculty and others]
• Piloting and refining metarubrics through three
cycles of leadership campus use (using e-
portfolios of student work [over 100 campuses,
including 12 leadership campuses]
• Final reliability and ease-of-use check with
national panel of 40 academics, employers,
teachers, community members

4. Outcomes for the development
of metarubrics:
• Inquiry and analysis
• Critical thinking
• Creative thinking
• Written communication
• Oral communication
• Quantitative literacy
• Information literacy
• Reading
• Teamwork
• Problem solving
• Civic knowledge and engagement—local and
global
• Intercultural knowledge and competence
• Ethical reasoning and action
• Foundations and skills for lifelong learning
• Integrative learning

5. Commonalities among
rubrics
Motivated by:
Need for among-campus communication
Mobile students, transfer
Belief that, in spite of uniqueness, core outcomes
are shared

6. VALUE Rubrics & Assessment
Rubrics Basics
Criteria

7. VALUE Rubrics & Assessment
Rubrics Basics
Levels

8. VALUE Rubrics & Assessment
Rubrics Basics
Performance
Descriptors

9. Validity and Usability
• Over 3000 distinct institutions have downloaded one or more
of the VALUE rubrics for use since fall 2010
• Over 11,000 distinct individuals have downloaded one or more
of the VALUE rubrics for use
• 3 major consortia are using VALUE rubrics for cross
institutional collaboration – Connect2Learning – LaGuardia
College/AAEEBL (FIPSE) – 23 campuses; Integrative Portfolio
Process – Michigan (FIPSE) – 6 campuses; RAILS –
Syracuse (Institute for Museum and Library Studies ACRL) –
10 campuses

10. Reliability Study
• 40 Faculty
• 4 Traditional Disciplinary Divisions – Humanities,
Social Sciences, STEM, Professions
• Three VALUE rubrics – Critical Thinking, Civic
Engagement, Integrative Learning
• Common set of student portfolio work
• Agreement = .66 without norming; .8 normed
• Another set of 5 campuses, using same set of
rubrics with 500 samples of student work – still
analyzing

13. Building the Evidentiary Base
• University of Kansas – Representing Results
Percent of Ratings
Critical Thinking: Issues, Analysis, and Conclusions
Inter-rater reliability = >.8

14. Building the Evidentiary Base
• University of Kansas – Representing Results
Critical Thinking: Evaluation of Sources and Evidence
Percent of Ratings

19. Building the Evidentiary Base
- Kansas
―VALUE added‖ for 4 years - writing
Percent of Ratings

20. Building the Evidentiary Base
• University of Kansas –
• ―analysis of the data from the AACU VALUE rubrics
affirmed that a team approach to course design can yield
larger improvement in some forms of student writing and
thinking‖
• ―We also saw that the rubrics work best when there is close
alignment between the nature of the assignment and the
dimensions of intellectual skill described in the rubric‖
• ―Finally, at a practical level we are very encouraged that this
process is manageable and sustainable‖

21. Roanoke College
Writing
Reliability = >.8

22. Using the Results
―…we excluded the scores for those instructors and ran
frequencies and descriptive statistics on the categories again.
We found the means for the rubric categories of Focus and
Thesis and Organization remained close to 2.5 with the scores
of 2 and 3 occurring most often (approx. 2.4) while most
scores for the categories of Evidence and Reasoning were 2s.
The category of Style and Mechanics was in the middle with a
mean of 2.3. Our adjusted results support what most
faculty believe about the writing of our first-year students,
they can learn to develop a thesis and organize a paper
more effectively than they can provide convincing
evidence and strong reasoning to support the thesis.‖

25. Table 1 Information Literacy Results
Building the Evidentiary Base
University of North Carolina - Wilmington
Table 1. Information Literacy Results
Dimension % of Work Products % of Work Products
Scored 2 or higher Scored 3 or Higher
IL1 Determine Information Needed 87.2% 46.2%
IL2 Access Needed Information 89.6% 46.8%
IL3 Evaluate Information and Sources 88.5% 39.7%
IL4 Use Information Effectively 85.9% 43.6%
IL5 Access and Use Information Ethically 93.6% 59.0%
Inter-rater reliability = >.8

30. Alverno College
Video of oral presentations
First year and last year

33. Carleton College
Sophomore portfolio
In the disciplines

34. Dissemination
• Dozens of presentations at accreditation and
assessment conferences (US and abroad) and
workshops
• Two issues (winter 2009, winter 2011/12) of Peer
Review on VALUE rubrics = 9,200 each, 1200
institutions
• Two Publications: 1) Rubrics = 6500+; 2)e-Portfolios
= 2800+ since early 2010 (about to be a book from
Jossey-Bass)
• Virtually all vendors of e-portfolio software products
have adopted VALUE rubrics
• Degree Qualifications Profile [DQP] (Lumina)
• Being used worldwide, e.g. Japan, Hong Kong,
Australia, United Arab Emirates, Korea
• Major state university systems are using VALUE
rubrics

35. Contacts
Terrel L Rhodes, AAC&U Vice President
rhodes@aacu.org
http://www.aacu.org/value