Assessment that Matters: Integrating the 'Chore' of Department-Based Assessment with Real Improvements in Undergraduate Political Science Education.

The goal of this paper is to show how one Political Science Department at small Midwest university utilized good assessment practices identified by the American Association for Higher Education (AAHE) and others in order to effect improvement. We argue that these principles can be followed in a way that is relatively painless for the a department and will produce numerous benefits for the department that go beyond the literal acts of planning and engaging in assessment. We hope that some of our experiences and rationale can be modeled at other institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]