Jason Koski/University Photography

Senior lecturer Cindy van Es teaches a class in introductory statistics.

Senior lecturer Cindy van Es has a simple way of gauging whether her introductory statistics students understand the material. She asks them to describe it in plain English.

"I have these catchphrases in my class: 'Say it to me' and 'So what?' You made that graph -- so what? What does it mean? How could somebody use it? Students don't really understand something unless they can verbalize it," she says.

van Es expanded the pedagogical concept five years ago, when an accreditation association required that she and others in the Department of Applied Economics and Management assess student learning. That meant articulating what the student were supposed to learn (for example, defining what constitutes a "successful" student), collecting systematic evidence of whether the students meet that definition and using that information to improve teaching.

She tweaked her tests and homework assignments to include interpretive questions that not only asked her students for the right answer, but also to describe why it is correct. "I've always had students write, but I'm really trying to weave it in everywhere," she says.

In the next academic year, administrators hope most Cornell professors will assess student learning. The university's accreditation will depend on it.

As the university prepares for reaccreditation in 2011 by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, Cornell must show that it has an ongoing and explicit process by which it assesses its students' learning to be reaccredited, said Laura Brown, vice provost for undergraduate education.

To provide for a fully instituted approach to the measurement of student learning, administrators have taken several steps. In fall 2009 Provost Kent Fuchs and Brown created a Core Assessment Committee comprising representatives from the undergraduate colleges and other academic units. They also appointed Kathy Edmondson, assistant dean in the College of Veterinary Medicine, as the university's assessment project manager.

This spring the committee created a website for faculty, with an overview of assessment and practical suggestions on how to put it into practice. The committee has also hammered out learning goals for the university as a whole and for each college, while each undergraduate college has started at least two pilot self-assessment programs. The committee is now establishing assessment goals for the fall semester, Brown said.

Since Cornell was last reaccredited, in 2001, assessment of student learning has become a major component of accountability in higher education, Brown said. "When we were last reviewed, assessment of student learning was primarily input oriented: What is the instructor putting into it, was the course well organized, did she follow her syllabus, did the grading seem fair," she said. "Assessment now is focusing on output: Have students learned what they were supposed to learn?"

To be reaccredited, which occurs every 10 years, Cornell must undergo a comprehensive institutional self-study to determine whether the university meets Middle States' standards. Then a team of external peers will visit Cornell to confirm the self-study results.

The reaccreditation steering committee is revising the self-study document, which it will make public in the fall. After the campus community comments on the document and the steering committee revises, the final version will go to the external review team, which will visit Cornell next May.

"By that time we want them to see that we're in the middle of a process that's very well under way," Brown said, "and that in another year or two, we'll really have in place universitywide assessment that's ongoing."