Approaches to Assurance of Learning 

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.
• A school 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.

Approaches to Assurance of Learning:

1. Selection

2. Course-embedded measurement

3. Demonstration through stand-alone testing or performance