Learning Outcomes-Based Assessment Issues in Student Affairs

<p>　 This article explores the context of applying a learning outcomes-based assessment to a college housing and residential life program. The change to leaner-centered education and learning-outcome assessment has had a big impact on Japanese universities over the past 10 years. However, this change is still confined to the curriculum, and there is no pressure to activate it in terms of applying it to student affairs/services as a whole. This paper puts its main focus on assessment in the context of student affairs in the U.S., predating developments in Japanese higher education, especially in terms of housing and residential life programs. The origin of student affairs programs in the U.S. can be found in colonial university halls of residence, and housing and residential life programs developed since they have a large organization and staff as well as independent revenue sources derived from student residential fees. This enables them to engage an assessment specialist of the kind required to facilitate development of an assessment culture in the program.</p><p>　 This paper takes up 2 cases of housing and residential programs in 2 universities with the aim of deepening understanding of the actual context of a learning-outcome assessment, The Ohio State University-Columbus and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In both the 2 cases, assessment specialists in student affairs or programs were hired, though different management styles, centralized and decentralized, were adopted in each case. Both value ideas generated by an interactive communications relationship between not only practitioner and practitioner, but also between practitioner and specialist. And they also have common structural characteristics. The first is that their assessment target is not limited to student learning outcomes, but extends over the entirety of programs or activities. The second is the development in recent years of a mid-term strategic plan. This describes student affairs as needing to be accountable to stakeholders for the role and meaning of its activities in education.</p><p>　 One of the important implications for future learning-outcome assessment in the context of the Japanese student affairs/services are the realization that learning-outcome assessment must be part of a mutual inter-relationship with institutional strategies and goals as well as with other educational activities and programs so as to improve educational quality as a whole.</p>