Humanizing the Assessment Process: How the RARE Model Informs Best Practices

This paper introduces a conceptual framework for overcoming common assessment challenges and supporting a positive assessment culture in higher education through fostering collaborative relationships with faculty and staff. By using a lens that integrates concepts from person-centered and solution-focused counseling, positive psychology, and motivational interviewing, assessment practitioners can better understand what guides the cultivation of inclusive and participatory relationships in assessment. The RARE model provides a common set of strategies for implementing principles of effective assessment practice, developed by two assessment professionals from universities located in different accrediting regions: WASC (Western Senior College and University Commission) and SACSCOC (Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges). In calling attention to the influence of their practitioner training and background, this model also highlights the benefit of exploring the disciplinary diversity that exists within the assessment field. Through exploration of this reflexive, strengths-based approach to assessment practice, the authors contribute to the discourse about professional identity in higher education assessment.