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The purpose of this paper is to explore the assessment methods used in higher education to assess students' learning, and to investigate the effects of college and grading system on the used assessment methods.

This descriptive study investigates the assessment methods used by teachers in higher education to assess their students' learning outcomes. An instrument consisting of 15 items (each item is an assessment method) was distributed to 736 undergraduate students from four public universities in Jordan.

Findings show that traditional paper‐pencil test is the most common method that is used to assess learning in higher education. Results also show that teachers in colleges of science and engineering and colleges of nursing use different assessment methods to assess learning, besides traditional testing such as: real life tasks (authentic assessment), papers, and projects. Also, the results show that teachers use the same assessment methods to assess learning, despite the grading systems (letter or numbers) used at their institutes.

The sample of the study was limited to undergraduate students and teachers' points of views about the frequent use of assessment methods were not studied.

Higher education institutes should encourage teachers to use new and modern assessment methods as well as traditional paper‐pencil testing, and study the reasons for not using these new methods.

The paper should alert the higher education institutes about the important of developing the assessment process, through knowing their students' points of view about the assessment methods. This will help to get students involved in the learning process.

For more than a decade, there has been an increased focus on the need for accountability and transparency about the value that United States and international higher education institutions add to students' knowledge and skills to help increase their economic productivity and career opportunities. This focus on accountability and transparency within the U.S. dates to 2005 when former US Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings established a Commission on the Future of Higher Education to develop a national strategy for higher education reform. This led to an increased focus on measuring value added within higher education institutions and using value-added scores to make institutional comparisons. This chapter presents a brief history of value added within the United States and presents high-level summaries of initiatives, assessments used to measure value added, and a review of how value added is measured. We also present challenges around methodology and interpretation of results. Lastly, we discuss some of the future directions in evaluating value added in higher education and areas for future research.

Student populations in higher education in the United States have become increasingly diverse as a result of demographic changes. As a result, educators need an understanding of the background and characteristics of these demographic subgroups in order to improve the quality of their education. Students’ approaches to learning affect their quality of learning and are influenced by their perceptions of the learning environment and assessment. The present study extends prior research by examining the approaches to learning, assessment preferences, and the relationship between approaches to learning and assessment preferences of intermediate accounting students enrolled in a public university in the United States with a diverse student population. Students with higher deep approaches to learning had higher preferences for assessment involving higher-order thinking tasks, integrated assessment, and nonconventional assessment. Students with higher surface approaches to learning had lower preferences for assessment involving higher-order thinking tasks. The differences in these relationships for subgroups of students defined by citizenship, age, gender, and race are presented. The implications of the results for teaching and learning in accounting education are discussed.

This chapter examines the development of a quality assurance system for undergraduate education as one aspect of the transformation of education policy in China. The central structure of the chapter is the process/stages of policy development and implementation, with particular attention to the changes over time in central control versus institutional autonomy. The Chinese government has moved to a “steering at a distance” approach with ex post accountability, giving institutions of higher education greater autonomy for undergraduate education. Government authority continues to be strong, however, even though the mechanisms of control have changed. This study provides an analysis of quality assurance in Chinese higher education and the changing relationship between government and campuses, using the lens of policy development and implementation.

Formative assessment is of critical concern within higher education, particularly as ‘feedback’ remains a recurring source of student dissatisfaction. In contemporary times, the need to decolonise higher education emerged first in post-colonial contexts of the global south, before becoming a more general debate in contexts which historically were at the heart of empire. Literatures on formative assessment and decolonisation have, however, remained discrete and disconnected. This chapter first makes the connection between decolonisation and assessment, highlighting the need to question dominant (modern) understandings of assessment as ‘objective’ measurement. It then suggests potentially helpful strands in assessment and wider literature to re-imagine formative assessment practices that might support decolonisation agendas, discussing this with reference to the authors' previous research. It closes by suggesting some modest ways forward that more openly acknowledge the problematics of assessment as a social practice, as well as the need for further research.

The purpose of this paper is to explore Portuguese academics' perceptions on higher education quality assessment objectives and purposes, in general, and on the recently implemented system for higher education quality assessment and accreditation, in particular. It aims to discuss the differences of those perceptions dependent on some academics' characteristics, such as: gender, disciplinary affiliation, type of higher education institution and experience in quality assurance activities.

An online questionnaire with Likert‐type answer scales was distributed to the Portuguese academic population (n=36,215). In total, 962 answers were collected from academics belonging to the public higher education system. Data were treated resorting to descriptive statistics, hypothesis tests and analysis of variance.

Portuguese academics tend to support the majority of goals and purposes quality assessment may have, as well as the main features of the newly designed quality assessment and accreditation system. Nevertheless they tend to support more quality assessment mechanisms privileging improvement over control. This support is slightly more evident among female academics, academics from public polytechnic institutions, from medical and health sciences and with former experience in quality assurance activities.

The study adds to the discussion on academics' perceptions on quality assurance, highlighting the influence played at this level by some of their characteristics. It is especially relevant for those working either in higher education institutions or governmental agencies, since it may contribute to the design of quality assurance systems academics are more likely to support.

This paper aims to highlight recent resources on information literacy (IL) and library instruction, providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering all library types.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations and other materials on library instruction and IL published in 2015.

This paper provides information about each source, describes the characteristics of current scholarship and highlights sources that contain either unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and IL.

This paper aims to present recently published resources on information literacy and library instruction providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering all library types.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2016.

The paper provides information about each source, describes the characteristics of current scholarship and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

In this chapter, Turkish educational system and institutional quality assessment initiatives of education are explained. And also, the relationship between educational quality assurance (QA) in Turkey and issues of effective schooling is summarised in terms of Turkish literature.

Education is widely accepted as a lifelong process. The school is an institution established in order to provide qualified education which contains complex and more abstract knowledge and ideas as well as literacy and simple numerical skills to the students. Each country has basically established education systems and educational institutions to ensure social integration, continuity and stability, and to sustain the social and cultural heritage of a society. Education in Turkey is one of the state’s basic functions according to the constitution and performed under the supervision and control of the state with the declaration of the Republic of Turkey. Ministry of National Education is responsible for the implementation of all education activities centrally managed in the Republic of Turkey. Higher Education Council (YÖK) is responsible for the management and thus the quality processes of the higher education institutions in Turkey. Two major attempts in this perspective are YÖK, which assesses the institutions with standards which are coherent with international accreditation institutions, and Higher Education Quality Council (YÖKAK), an independent and specific council which is established by YÖK. YÖK and YÖKAK are governmental-based quality-assessment institutions. Association for Evaluation and Accreditation of Teacher Colleges’ Educational Programs (EPDAD) is also an independent institution for quality assessment of education faculties which focusses on teacher training and education. The purpose of EPDAD is to strengthen the student learning in formal training and to ensure the quality standards for candidate teachers. Any undergraduate programme which meets the standards of EPDAD is accredited for three years. Standards of EPDAD are detailed in this chapter.

This paper aims to present recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering all library types.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, reports and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2018.

The paper provides a brief description of all 422 sources, and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians and anyone interested as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.