James Madison University’s (JMU) Student Affairs Assessment Support Services (SASS) web page is this month’s NILOA Featured Website! While SASS offers various services for members of the JMU community such as consulting and the Learning Improvement Initiative with the Division of Student Affairs, there are also a myriad of resources for external visitors. For example, SASS features numerous resources for each step of the assessment process including resources for developing student learning outcome statements (SLOS), background on and characteristics of good SLOS, important things to consider before writing SLOS, and the ABCD method for ensuring your outcomes are measurable. Furthermore, resources for assessment instrument selection and design include tips for aligning instruments to SLOS, and the advantages and disadvantages of selecting already available instruments versus creating your own. There are also resources for program creation and mapping which follow a program theory approach, and program implementation and fidelity to ensure your program is implemented as intended.

Website visitors can also find information on professional standards for assessment, JMU’s guide to reporting assessment results, presentation slides for past assessment workshops, and links to useful assessment organizations, conferences, awards, and journals. We invite you to peruse the valuable resources for each step of the assessment process. Finally, there are various resources linked through the Center for Assessment & Research Studies (CARS). Visitors can look into their award winning Assessment 101 workshop, as well as find learning improvement examples. In addition, you can find several useful overarching resources on assessment for academic programs and general education in the form of handouts, videos, articles, and presentations. For these reasons, JMU’s Student Affairs Support Services web page is a NILOA Featured Website in the Centralized Assessment Repository and Creativity categories, as well as an exemplar for the Transparency Framework Assessment Resources component.