So I'm going to try to keep this short, but this is a big topic.

In a nutshell, assessment at Miami (but certainly more generally) is a
dysfunctional mess that adds significant workload to faculty and
staff, with very little benefit. It does a very poor job of actually
measuring what our students are learning, and does so in a way that is
not useful to faculty.

So on possibilities with the next-gen version of Sakai, particularly
if we get more involved and push on this ...

I understand there was some talk on assessment on campus today in
which the speaker made similar points, and argued much as I have been,
that assessment needs to be much more finely woven into what we do on
a daily basis. But the obvious question is, how do you actually do
this? What's the practical solution?

Here's one answer I proposed to integrate into Sakai OAE (see comments
section at bottom of page), which is in turn inspired by work started
in Miami's comp sci department.

<https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/3AK/URG+Assessment+Discussion>

I haven't yet heard back about how practical the OAE development group
thinks this is to integrate now.

Bruce

PS - portfolio tools aren't enough; this needs to be part of our daily workflow.
-- 
Bruce D'Arcus
Associate Professor, Graduate Director
Department of Geography
Miami University
234 Shideler Hall
Oxford, Ohio 45056