1. Selection: Schools may select students into a program on the basis of knowledge or skills expected in graduates of a degree program.

Some examples of assurance by selection might include:

• A school might insist that all of its MBA graduates have second-language ability. Rather than providing second-language training, the school might admit only students who can demonstrate second-language ability on a specified exam. Though the school does not provide this learning, they use the exam to assure (at entrance to the program) that all of the graduates have the specified ability.


• A program may select students on the basis of their having achieved certain levels of written communications skills as demonstrated in materials submitted during the school's application process. An assessment of the required skills would be a routine part of the admission decision process. The school might provide skill-building opportunities for applicants who do not register sufficiently high in the selection process, and such students would have a later opportunity to show that they meet the school's expectations.


• Schools may attract a large proportion of students to its master’s level program who have engineering degrees or other backgrounds with high levels of quantitative training. While the degree program may have curricular opportunities for students to develop statistical reasoning skills, many applicants may demonstrate such skills in a placement exam during the application process. For this school, assurance of learning on its statistical reasoning learning goal may be demonstrable through performance on the placement exam at admission or alternatively, through another assurance technique for those students who take the required statistics courses.


• Schools in countries where thirteen years of pre-collegiate education is the norm may be able to select students who already meet general knowledge and skills learning goals relating to historical and cultural understanding.

In the accreditation review process, schools will be expected to demonstrate that the selection process ensures that students have accomplished the learning goals when they use selection as the assurance method.

2. Course-embedded measurement: Required courses may expose students to systematic learning experiences designed to produce graduates with the particular knowledge or abilities specified in the school's learning goals. In such cases, the school can establish assessments within the required courses for those learning goals. Some examples of course-embedded measurement might be:

• A school that has a written communication learning goal might specify that a particular course will have required writing exercises in it. Such exercises could serve the assessment needs of the course and also provide the school with assurance that students meet the learning goal in written communication. The course-embedded measurements must be constructed to demonstrate whether students achieve the school’s learning goals, and the measurements must be a mandated part of that course.


• A school with learning goals that require students to integrate knowledge across business functional areas or to incorporate ethical considerations into decision-making, may embed the measurement of accomplishment on those goals into a capstone business-strategy course. In addition to the information provided for course assessment by the projects that measure learning on these topics, the assessments provide the school with the assurance measures needed to ascertain whether the school's learning goals are being met.

In the accreditation review process, reviewers will expect schools to have examples of student work available for inspection at the on-site review when they use course-embedded measurement to assure that students accomplish learning goals. Schools should present examples of student performance on tests or in course project work. The school should show how information from these measurements informs the school’s management of the educational process. Schools should describe the processes they use to see that the information from the course-embedded measurements inform the schools' management processes and lead to improvement efforts.

3. Demonstration through stand-alone testing or performance: Students may be required to demonstrate certain knowledge or skills as a requirement for graduation or at some other specific point in their degree programs.

Examples of demonstration through performance often take the form of special assessments:

• At the end of a degree program students may be asked to demonstrate knowledge and ability through testing in specific content areas such as foreign language ability, critical thinking ability, or specific content knowledge. Specific content knowledge tests may represent learning goals for disciplines.


• A special examination required of all students to qualify for the final year of the program might require a demonstration of composition skills in written communications.


• A thesis or senior project might be required to demonstrate students' ability to integrate knowledge across different disciplines.