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Assessments of what students learn during college are typically used for either improvement or accountability, and occasionally both. For reasons carefully outlined by Peter Ewell in this NILOA Occasional Paper, since the early days of the “assessment movement” in the US, these two purposes of outcomes assessment have not rested comfortably together. No one is more qualified than Ewell to summarize what has changed and what has not over the past two decades in terms of student learning outcomes assessment and the shifting expectations and demands of policy makers, accreditors, higher education leaders, and government officials about student and institutional performance. After delineating how various kinds of information can and should be used for improvement and accountability, he points to ways that institutions can productively manage the persistent tensions associated with improvement and accountability as faculty and staff members do the important work of documenting, reporting, and using what students have learned and can do as a result of their college experience.

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