A multifaceted assessment process allows the development of each student to be observed and improved as she moves through the curriculum. A corresfionding evaluation process allows the content of curricula to be ualtdated against external, real-world standards.

Assessment acquires meaning when it enhances the learning of the individual student. It can do so to the degree that faculty take responsibility for forging the components of assessment into a process that connects exfiected learning outcomes with assessment and feedback.Assessment can provide power for learning. It can do so if faculty set forth a process of action and map its direction so that students can steer their learning more surely. Setting forth implies taking responsibility for the what, how, and why of assessment. Mapping its direction implies connecting those parts into a process to serve the learner.Such connections might seem obvious-what we assess should be what we teach, should be what we consider successful learning, and should be what constitutes our basis for granting academic credit and graduation. Ye! more and more colleges are asking questions like "How might faculty use assessment results?" "How can we involve faculty in assessment?" Rather than a process, assessment is often a set of disconnected parts looking for a whole. Another way to put this concern is to say that our institutional mission should relate to our expected educational outcomes, which should relate to our program and course outcomes, which should relate to all aspects of our assessment process.As faculty, we seem often to have lost the process, so that students are either completely on their own or receive occasional discrete spurts of assistance. Some theorists and practitioners of adult education say, 19 J. H. McMillan (cd.). Assrssing Stwhir' Dmning. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, no. 34. San Francisco: Joswy-Bass, Summer 1988.

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