Creating Avenues: Partnerships in a Changing Environment

-Creating avenues: PartnershiPs in a Changing environmentRegional accrediting bodies have increasingly mandated assessments of student learning outcomes. This reflects the current push for accountability triggered by legislatures who represent a public that wants to see the best return on the tax dollar. The interesting part is that not all regional accrediting bodies are requiring the same level of documentation of student learning. As a result, one challenge for librarians is to determine the assessment criteria appropriate for their university contexts. Criteria can be defined in several ways—by the regional accreditors, by the professional accreditors, and by the institution. Boards of regents and institutions’ respective higher education systems may also mandate criteria. The demands of multiple and sometimes conflicting bodies present formidable challenges to understand and assess learning. The regional accrediting commission formulates their criteria based on the definition of information literacy cited by the Association of College and Research Libraries’ standards for information literacy. MandaTes