This is a practical resource for community and two year college professionals engaged at all levels of learning outcomes assessment. It is designed as a guide both to inform the creation of new assessment efforts and to enhance and strengthen assessment programs already established, or in development. Each chapter addresses a key component of the assessment process, beginning with the creation of a learning-centered culture and the development and articulation of shared outcomes goals and priorities. Subsequent chapters lead the reader through the development of a plan, the selection of assessment methods, and the analysis of results. The book concludes by discussing the communication of results and their use in decision making; integrating the conclusions in program review as well as to inform budgeting; and, finally, evaluating the process for continuous improvement, as well as engaging in reflection.The book is illustrated by examples developed by faculty and student affairs/services professionals at community and two year colleges from across the country. Furthermore, to ensure its relevance and applicability for its targeted readership, each chapter has at least one author who is a community college or two-year college professional.

This is a practical resource for community and two year college professionals engaged at all levels of learning outcomes assessment. It is designed as a guide both to inform the creation of new assessment efforts and to enhance and strengthen assessment programs already established, or in development. Each chapter addresses a key component of the assessment process, beginning with the creation of a learning-centered culture and the development and articulation of shared outcomes goals and priorities. Subsequent chapters lead the reader through the development of a plan, the selection of assessment methods, and the analysis of results. The book concludes by discussing the communication of results and their use in decision making; integrating the conclusions in program review as well as to inform budgeting; and, finally, evaluating the process for continuous improvement, as well as engaging in reflection.The book is illustrated by examples developed by faculty and student affairs/services professionals at community and two year colleges from across the country. Furthermore, to ensure its relevance and applicability for its targeted readership, each chapter has at least one author who is a community college or two-year college professional.

This practical guide to outcomes-based assessment in student affairs is designed to help readers meet the growing demand for accountability, and for demonstrating student learning. The authors offer a framework for implementing the assessment of student learning and development and pragmatic advice on the strategies most appropriate for the readers' particular circumstances. Beginning with a brief history of assessment, the book explains how to effectively engage in outcomes-based assessment, presents strategies for addressing the range of challenges and barriers student affairs practitioners are likely to face, addresses institutional, divisional, and departmental collaboration, and considers future developments in the assessment of student success. One feature of the book is its use of real case studies that illustrate current best practices in student affairs assessment that illuminate theory, while providing examples of application. The cases of this title allow the authors to demonstrate that there are several approaches to evaluating student learning and development within student affairs; illustrating how practice may vary according to institutional type, institutional culture, and available resources. The authors explain how to set goals, write outcomes, describe the range of assessment methods available, discuss criteria for evaluating outcomes-based assessment, and provide steps and questions to consider in designing the reflection and institutional assessment processes, as well as how to effectively utilize and disseminate results. Their expert knowledge, tips, and insights will enable readers to implement outcomes-based assessment in ways that best meet the needs of their own unique campus environments.

This practical guide to outcomes-based assessment in student affairs is designed to help readers meet the growing demand for accountability, and for demonstrating student learning. The authors offer a framework for implementing the assessment of student learning and development and pragmatic advice on the strategies most appropriate for the readers' particular circumstances. Beginning with a brief history of assessment, the book explains how to effectively engage in outcomes-based assessment, presents strategies for addressing the range of challenges and barriers student affairs practitioners are likely to face, addresses institutional, divisional, and departmental collaboration, and considers future developments in the assessment of student success. One feature of the book is its use of real case studies that illustrate current best practices in student affairs assessment that illuminate theory, while providing examples of application. The cases of this title allow the authors to demonstrate that there are several approaches to evaluating student learning and development within student affairs; illustrating how practice may vary according to institutional type, institutional culture, and available resources. The authors explain how to set goals, write outcomes, describe the range of assessment methods available, discuss criteria for evaluating outcomes-based assessment, and provide steps and questions to consider in designing the reflection and institutional assessment processes, as well as how to effectively utilize and disseminate results. Their expert knowledge, tips, and insights will enable readers to implement outcomes-based assessment in ways that best meet the needs of their own unique campus environments.

Charting important new territory within medieval gender studies, Megan Moore explores the vital role that women played in transmitting knowledge and empire within Mediterranean cross-cultural marriages. Whereas cross-cultural exchange has typically been understood through the lens of male-centered translation work, this study, which is grounded in the relations between the west and Byzantium, examines cross-cultural marriage as a medium of literary and cultural exchange, one in which women's work was equally important as men's. Moore's readings of Old French and Medieval Greek texts reveal the extent to which women challenged the cultures into which they married and shaped their new courtly environments. Through the lens of medieval gender and postcolonial theory, Exchanges in Exoticism demonstrates how the process of cultural exchange - and empire building - extends well beyond our traditional assumptions about gender roles in the medieval Mediterranean.

The Erotics of Grief considers how emotions propagate power by exploring whose lives are grieved and what kinds of grief are valuable within and eroticized by medieval narratives. Megan Moore argues that grief is not only routinely eroticized in medieval literature but that it is a foundational emotion of medieval elite culture. Focusing on the concept of grief as desire, Moore builds on the history of the emotions and Georges Bataille's theory of the erotic as the conflict between desire and death, one that perversely builds a sense of community organized around a desire for death. The link between desire and death serves as an affirmation of living communities. Moore incorporates literary, visual, and codicological evidence in sources from across the Mediterranean—from Old French chansons de geste, such as the Song of Roland and La mort le roi Artu and romances such as Erec et Enide, Philomena, and Floire et Blancheflor; to Byzantine and ancient Greek novels; to Middle English travel narratives such as Mandeville's Travels. In her reading of the performance of grief as one of community and remembrance, Moore assesses why some lives are imagined as mattering more than others and explores how a language of grief becomes a common language of status among the medieval Mediterranean elite.

Drawing upon literary, historical, and visual evidence, this collection of interdisciplinary essays examines how the Mediterranean shaped practices of gender in the premodern era. This volume bridges the gap between gender studies and Mediterranean studies, which have a natural fit with each other in their interest on defining identity carefully through connectivity and attentiveness to cultural hegemonies. The essays in this volume build off of this double approach to offer a unique contribution to the field, and use gender to understand the Mediterranean and the Mediterranean to understand premodern gender. Whereas other volumes have examined gender in the premodern period or premodern Mediterranean Studies, to date no other volume has sought to explore the intersection of the two. The interdisciplinary nature of the essays will make them useful to both scholars and teachers, for they will combine theory and practice in a length that makes them easily accessible to advanced students as well as specialized researchers. The first chapter provides a critical overview of the scholarship on Mediterranean studies as a field of area studies as well as an overview of gender studies in the medieval period. As such, the volume will be useful for students, teachers, and researchers, and its interdisciplinary nature reflects the diaspora of the Mediterranean itself.