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Assessment and evaluation have always been an integral part of the educational process. Quality and purposeful assessment can assist in students’ learning and their achievement. In recent years, considerable attention has been given to the roles of educational measurement, evaluation, and assessment with a view to improving the education systems throughout the world. Educators are interested in how to adequately prepare the young generation to meet the ever-growing demands of the 21st century utilizing robust assessment methods. There has also been increased demand in accountability and outcomes assessment in schools to bridge the gap between classroom practices and measurement and assessment of learners’ performance. This volume contains selected and invited papers from the First International Conference on Educational Measurement, Evaluation and Assessment (ICEMEA). (From the Publisher)

The power of affirmation lies in the acknowledgement of a job well done.  When colleagues applaud our success, we feel more a part of the enterprise, more connected, and more accepted. Being affirmed is being seen, noticed, made visible in erasing workplaces where so much of our work feels like it goes unnoticed or simply taken for granted. Feelings of isolation and separation are lightened with applause. Recently, I facilitated a workshop on teamwork and collaboration for a group of women who work as administrative assistants for a large corporation. For the most part, they feel unappreciated and under-valued. I led them in an activity which was intended to spark appreciation amongst them. I divided them into pairs and instructed each pair to interview the other. The interviewee was to share two of her recent successes at work. Then the roles were switched. When it came time to report back, each pair member was told to tell the entire group one of the interviewee’s successes for which the entire group would then applaud wildly. I gave the instructions and asked if there were any questions. One woman commented that if we applaud too loudly security might come. I told her we would risk it. The group quickly divided into pairs and began the conversations. After a bit, I reconvened the group and asked the first pair to report. I reminded the group to get ready to applaud for each person. The first woman told of her partner’s success. I began applauding and the group members joined in. With each success story, I extended the applause and added a cheer and called out the woman’s name. The group followed suit. Smiles appeared on each face, and the woman being applauded sat up a little straighter in her chair and smiled--a little bit. By the time we finished, the energy in the room was vibrant. It was an affirmation fest! At the end of the last session, as our benediction, we repeated the exercise. Rather than being interviewed, each woman told of an accomplishment she had in the last week or so. Without prompting, the women applauded wildly for each other. Security did not come. I encouraged the women to find ways to routinely inquire about each other’s professional successes as well as personal accomplishments. I ended the session, gathered my belongings, and opened the door to leave. A senior executive was standing in the hallway. He looked surprised when the door opened. He commented, without smiling or making eye contact, in a chastising tone, “You all are very raucous.” I said, “We most certainty are,” as I walked past him without stopping. The postal service was still the preferred mode of communication for important documents when I was working on my dissertation. I had sent my advisor a draft of two chapters. When the mail was delivered to our home, there was a thick, thick envelope. I looked at the address label. The huge envelope was for me, from my advisor. My heart sank. I was mortified. Why was the package sooo thick? I assumed that she did not like my work and had included the paperwork needed for me to withdraw from the program. I assumed she hated my work and wrote, in many pages, to inform me of my inadequacy. My fears paralyzed me. I left the package unopened for a day–too afraid to open it. Finally–after having driven my family crazy with my whining and self-criticism–I opened the package. Much to my surprise, relief, and delight, my advisor had so thoroughly read my work that her comments, affirmations, and edits were two pages for every one page I had written. My advisor had done the closest read I had ever received on my work. Her extensive comments were on the ways I could continue to strengthen already sound chapters. Her affirmation reduced me to tears. What she thought of my work meant the world to me. Hearing that my work was good and could be made better was a life-changing experience. Knowing that she poured over my work, considered my assertions, and resonated with my argument, made me take my own thoughts more seriously. It made me want to write better, deeper, more clearly. She had sent me a package of affirmation. When I was in elementary school, on report card day, my brother and I received $1 for every A, 50 cents for every B, nothing for a C, and we owed our parents for anything lower than a C. My parents were not paying us for the grades we made. They were affirming us, in a very tangible and pleasant way, for our hard work. They were teaching us that our good grades needed to be celebrated. They wanted us to know that our good grades were noticed and that our good grades were a point of pride. After we were paid by my father, my brother would ask to go to the store so he could spend his bounty. I, more frugal, put mine in the log cabin bank on my dresser. I was planning on buying a blue Ford Mustang on my 16th birthday. Our faculty has a ritual which has been quite meaningful for me when it was been my turn, and for which I love to participate for others. At faculty meetings, when someone is tenured and promoted, we read aloud excerpts of the letter sent to the Trustee Board. The excerpts extol the value of the work by the celebrated colleague. The excerpts make reference to their successes and accomplishments, and proclaim the good efforts of the colleague. Once the words are spoken, the colleague receives thunderous applause and the entire faculty lifts champagne glasses and toasts the colleague for a job well done. It is an elegant gesture. It is a moment when the collected body affirms the individual for the contribution made for the flourishing of the whole. It is a lovely moment. Performance, per se, is not the world I know. Beyond third grade, I have never taken a bow with other cast members of a play; I have never bowed after performing with a band or choir. What I have experienced is, after giving a scholarly paper at a guild meeting, noticing the decibels of applause after my paper. In those moments, I am appreciative of the applause. If/when the applause seems to linger, even a bit, I am especially pleased that the audience signals their affirmation of my work. It is a small thing, but it sustains me, lifts me; there is no applause after writing a book. A challenge of teaching adult students is that they want to be affirmed for what they already know. When the desire for affirmation is at the expense of openness to learning, this is not applause worthy. Refusing to learn, yet still wanting applause, can be disconcerting to the hopeful teacher. I recently survived end-of-the-semester student presentations. For the students who engaged the assignment, worked at exploring new materials, and created a meaningful and feasible project, I gave strong and clear affirmation. For at least three students I clapped loudly, uproariously, gladly. For the students who presented half-baked projects which lacked thoughtfulness and made me, at times, question my vocational choices, I did not give negative words of criticism. I instead sat in silence, withholding the anticipated affirmation. Students seemed confused when their paltry presentations did not garner the expected affirmation. I am disappointed when they choose to opt-out of working hard in a course they have enrolled in under their own volition. I am amazed when they are confused about not getting affirmation for poor work.  Here’s the thing about applause. It is a gracious and generous gesture which is needed by us all. It is not to be squandered or provided disingenuously. It is not to be demanded for lazy efforts. The sound of applause and the feeling it conjures is that for which so many of us yearn. This yearning is not selfish or grandiose. It is a heartfelt desire to do work that counts, to do work that is meaningful and held in high regard by our peers and elders. The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.

“I feel like I’m constantly grading now.”  My colleague’s comment was offered as a lament over so much more assessment now that our school had transitioned to an online curriculum. That online courses required more grading was a surprise, and a mystery, to me at first too. Why should the delivery format make such a difference to how a course gets graded? There is an answer to that question, and the nature of learning provides the answer. Online learning is learning mediated by distance and time. It doesn’t have the same social component, or the immediacy of interaction, that learning in class does. Going to class—and therefore, presumably, learning—constitutes the primary blocks of a residential student’s day, but learning done by students in an online school is often piled onto or squeezed into a daily schedule that is not otherwise centered around education. Online learning, therefore, occurs in isolation from many of the reinforcements to comprehension, inquiry, and creativity provided by face-to-face environments, e.g., shared space, informal conversation, direct and immediate access to professors, and even simple sensory aids like handouts, refreshments, show-and-tell objects, and rituals used to begin and end class. These sorts of things all contribute, in face-to-face education, to creating a learning environment that marks the moment of learning: “Now, here, learning is happening,” they convey.   In other words, they help sustain student engagement. Online instructors must find other ways to achieve what going to class achieves for residential students. We have to design our online courses in ways that grab our students’ attention and keep them motivated as they progress. We learn to employ strategies that encourage students to logon frequently, help them feel present within the online space and online community, provide them with frequent opportunities to verify their understanding of course content, to ask questions, to participate in discussion, to receive feedback, and to see their progress.  Frequent, small assessments constitute one of these strategies. They play a role in a larger ecology of learning that has many points and modes of engagement. Certainly, instructors can overload a course with too many little tasks and activities, but, generally speaking, lessons that are chunked into multiple small assignments keep students more engaged than do lessons consisting simply of reading and discussion—leading up to a big test or paper at the end of the course. In addition, when those smaller chunks are graded, students must complete them in order to succeed in the course. Grading creates a point of connection between student and professor, especially if it includes feedback and not just a number. As they accumulate, grades can provide students with a visual picture of their progress. This is the reason why online education can involve so much grading. It’s about engagement. It isn’t necessarily about the need to measure or evaluate every single thing an online student does. One does not even have to award numbers or letter grades each time.  (Continually having to decide where student work falls on a grading scale is what tires instructors like my colleague.) The larger point is that student engagement and motivation are keys to successful learning in general, no matter the delivery method. And this is what teaching online, with its seemingly endless assessment, has taught me about learning. There are many studies proving the connection between engagement and learning. Since I cannot do justice to them here, I will close by reflecting on my own experiences as a learner. Like many future academics, motivating myself to learn was never particularly hard and I got to study things that naturally aroused my curiosity. I did not need bells and whistles to make me interested. But there are always exceptions. When learning is obligatory or seems irrelevant, it’s been the graded assignments that have spurred me on. Several years ago, I had to take a course in driver safety to be allowed to shepherd students on field trips. The course didn’t involve any actual driving but, rather, watching videos and taking a test. I was largely bored and disengaged until it was time to be tested. Then my competitive nature kicked in. When I passed with a nearly perfect grade but did not receive 100%, I wanted to take the course over again!  To this day, I still remember the driving rule that I got wrong on that test.

Jewish educational projects and programs are thriving, attracting philanthropic support for exciting and creative approaches in every sector and setting. But underneath that energy, we are not as clear as we ought to be about desired outcomes, the kinds of learning needed to achieve these, and how those kinds of learning actually occur. This volume is the first of its kind to bring together scholars from inside Jewish education and from the learning sciences. It offers a set of critical perspectives on learning, sometimes borrowing models from other domains (such as science) and sometimes examining specific domains within Jewish education (such as havruta learning or the learning of Jewish history). Collectively, these contributions help to advance a smarter, sharper conversation about Jewish learning that matters. (From the Publisher)

Persons new to the office of the Dean may soon discover the need to acquire a new set of skills to effectively carry out the job. Those skills range from supervision, pastoral care (yes, more than you imagined!), educational administrative planning, curriculum design and planning, political acumen, budgeting and financial management, and assessment. Of these, none seems to puzzle novice deans more than educational assessment. While it can seem daunting, as I sometimes tell deans asking for help in this practice, "It's not rocket science, but it helps if you know what you're doing." There are six types of assessment practices, which, used together, will provide the dean a multifaceted and holistic view of student learning outcomes. These will provide deans, and Faculty, the data needed to evaluate the effectiveness of the curricula and to make wise and appropriate adjustments. Good data, rigorously derived, make for better decision-making than hunches, good-sounding ideas, predilections, or fads. As well, these assessments will provide the information needed to demonstrate rigorous academic practices to accrediting bodies. The Six Types of Assessments DIAGNOSTIC Diagnostic assessment measures a student's, or a class of students', strengths, weaknesses, knowledge, and skills prior to an instructional set (a course), or prior to starting a program of study. Examples of diagnostic assessments used in theological schools include the TOEFL language proficiency exam given to international applicants, and the GRE. Some schools may administer writing assessments to evaluate the need for remedial work in preparation for academic writing in a degree program. Some DMin programs use the MAT as part of their admissions requirements. Some schools administered the MMPI personality inventory as part of their application process (which, upon taking, the seminary intake counselor suggested I should not go into ministry; advice I ignored and went on to have a successful ministry career. So there.). FORMATIVE Formative assessment practices give evidence of a student's performance during instruction, during a learning experience, or in the midst of a course of study. Formative assessments are applied regularly at intervals throughout the instruction process. An example is a multi-faceted "mid-course" assessment with a faculty adviser to review academic performance and progress through a degree program course of study. This can include a student's self-assessment about their progress in formation goals. For students, formative assessments is an opportunity to receive feedback on academic performance and other goals. SUMMATIVE Summative evaluations measure a student's achievement at the conclusion of an instructional set or course of study. The most obvious course level summative assessment are final exams and the final grade a student receives in a course. At the program level, summative assessments can include a grade distribution analysis, program retention and completion rates, graduating class profiles, and, a grade point analysis of graduating students (highest, lowest, median, average). NORM-REFERENCED This assessment practice compares a student's performance against a national or other "norm" group. Some denominations require candidacy and ordination exams that demonstrate competencies in areas such as biblical exegesis, theology, polity, and worship and sacraments. These denominations can provide comparative data to show your students' placement in norm-referenced evaluations and exams. Due to the loose and broad interpretation of accreditation standards, the wide variety of theological school cultures and contexts, and the range and amorphous nature of what constitutes effective ministry practice or pastoral competencies, norm-referenced assessments are a challenge in theological schools. CRITERION-REFERENCED This assessment practice measures a student's performance against a published goal, specific objectives, or standards. In theological schools the most common criteria are interpretations of accreditation standards in program goals and the derivative student learning outcomes embedded in courses and program components. The application of well-designed assessment rubrics aid in the assessment of criterion-referenced evaluations. BENCHMARK Benchmark evaluations are similar to some of the above. These practices are used to evaluate student performance at periodic intervals, or at the end of a grading period. They can be used to predict student performance on end-of-course summative tests, or, end-of-program competencies evaluations. Benchmark evaluations can also be used to predict student performance post-graduation. The use of alumni surveys evaluated with alignment with degree program goals can help in benchmark assessment. Again, the range ministry contexts in which alumni serve, and the amorphous nature of what constitutes ministry competencies, provide a challenge for theological schools to establish benchmarks. The increasing attention to competency-based programs will likely require schools to identify "benchmarks" as indicators of levels of competencies. How many of these six assessments do you apply in your evaluation practices in your school? Which might you need to implement to provide a richer and more balanced assessment profile for your school? How, for whom, and where will you publish the results of your assessments? For information? For accountability? For reporting?

Arguably, due to suspicion, skepticism, and the entrenchment of classroom teaching practices, the most scrutinized, assessed, and evaluated pedagogy in theological schools in the last two decades has been online learning (“distance education”). Fortunately, the skepticism that fueled a demand for more rigorous evaluation of student learning in the online environment has yielded hard evidence that online learning is as effective, and sometimes more effective, than traditional classroom teaching. The goal of this work by Catalano, an associate professor of teaching and learning at Hofstra University, is “to assist researchers of distance education, both novice and expert, in finding well-developed and value measures to suit their research questions” (2). The focus of the book is “on properly validated measures, thereby relieving the researcher from having to develop his or her own instrument” (2).     Catelano provides a concise guide to seventy selected assessment instruments (surveys, scales, and methods) that have been used to evaluate the effectiveness of online learning programs. The instruments can be applied to evaluate key metrics and pedagogical, as well as programmatic, elements such as: student engagement, student and faculty satisfaction, information retention, self-efficacy, student and teacher readiness, the online learning environment, cooperative learning, competencies for online learning, student attitudes, student retention and attrition, critical thinking, and achievement. Several instruments focus on specific pedagogical approaches such as constructivism and andragogy. Five chapters provide nine categories of evaluations. Specifically, Chapter 1 provides eleven instruments on student engagement and satisfaction. Chapter 2 contains sixteen instruments on student readiness to learn and self-efficacy. Chapter 3 offers a selection of seventeen instruments focusing on the online teaching and learning environment. Chapter 4 provides twelve instruments on student learning behaviors. Chapter 5 contains five instruments to assess student achievement, retention, and attrition. Obviously, there are enough offerings in these chapters to meet just about any evaluation need an assessor may have. Each chapter includes a brief overview of each instrument covered. Each instrument entry includes a summary of the tool, a description of how the measure is used, and a description of its development and validity.         Some of the instruments described are complete tools (for example, a fully developed satisfaction questionnaire, a complete survey on student evaluation of online web-based instruction, and one on the online learning environment. Other instruments are described with information about their sources should an assessor wish to use them.          In the Introduction Catalano provides helpful background on the criteria for inclusion of the instruments selected for the compendium. The author describes the search process used in identifying the instruments, including applying the criteria of ensuring reliability and validity. For those needing to continue to assess online learning through disciplined and rigorous evaluations, whether as part of formative curricular assessment or to satisfy accreditation requirements, Amy Catalano’s brief compendium of assessment instruments, scales, and approaches is a handy and accessible tool. Indeed, it should be on every evaluator’s desk.

There are at least two uses of the phrase “good enough.” One meaning commonly found in public discourse denotes minimal, less than best effort. The other meaning, a more technical one from psychology, requires a focused discipline of self-awareness that guards against unhealthy perfectionism (“I can and I will be perfect”) or academic narcissism (“I can and I will know it all”).  I often hear the more negative meaning in theological education: “I don’t want my students to be good enough,” a colleague said to me after reading my recent blog,[1] “I want them to be better than good enough.” After seeing the course learning goal to “define and give examples of good enough pastoral care,” a student remembered a motivational saying from their childhood that ran “good enough is the enemy of excellence.” These are important concerns if good enough means minimal, irresponsible engagement.  However, taken as a discipline of ongoing rigorous self-awareness, good enough teaching and learning is an important part of pedagogical excellence. I believe teaching and learning must be good enough, in this sense, to support thriving.[2]  Good enough teaching and learning involves identifying and responding to the predictable misconnections in our craft so that thriving is an available possibility for all teachers and learners.  A Mishap in Connecting the Dots I recently made a teaching mistake involving extreme connect-the-dots.  While I was familiar with the burgeoning market of adult mindfulness coloring books, a colleague introduced me to “extreme connect-the-dots” at a theory-heavy small academic meeting. The meeting involved wonderful academic papers and a lot of sitting and listening, and the exercise provided a strategy for mindful focusing. I was surprised that connecting the tiny numbered dots from one-to-seven-hundred-and-something to make my own dot-to-dot “Mona Lisa” did help me focus. Later, I decided to try this in my classroom in a week-long intensive course that met from 8:30 am-5:00 pm for five days straight. I am always up for new strategies for focus and energy in such a setting! In addition to trustworthy strategies like varying course activities and scheduling mid-week field work, I purchased an extreme connect-the-dot book called something like “florals and other calming themes.” I tried out a few and then distributed some pages I had not yet completed myself. This turned out to be a mistake.  During the mid-morning break the first day, a student came up and said that I might want to take a look at how she had connected the dots. To my surprise, once the dots were connected, one “floral and other calming theme” image depicted a human being in troubling cultural stereotype.  Embarrassed, I ended that connect-the-dot opportunity and replaced it with coloring sheets.  After processing the mishap with my student, I decided not to use class time to address the event since other students had not worked on the images. In hindsight, not disclosing what had happened to other students was likely a missed teaching and learning moment that could have benefitted the class. While not perfect, the class went well, overall. An Overall, Good Enough Class Overcoming the felt need for pedagogical perfection is a constant struggle. I am increasingly wary of the word “perfect” in my home or classroom.  When my son was in preschool, one day he said, “my day was good, overall.” Struck by his use of the word “overall,” I asked what he meant.  He said that anyone can make three mess ups and have an overall good day.  He proceeded to tell me about his mess ups that day—not listening, not paying attention to his body in space, hurting someone’s feelings. He explained that tomorrow you can do better if you work on these mess ups today.  As a pastoral theologian invested in good enough teaching and learning, I find the idea of an overall good enough day to be a helpful assessment tool. I hope to train and learn with budding theologians whose excellence includes (1) being aware that they will inevitably make mistakes and (2) practicing the courage needed to address and learn from mess ups in order to (3) be ever mindful of confessing and minimizing harm in the world. A good enough learning environment is not perfect, but rather thoughtful and open to continued learning. One way to connect the dots before class, metaphorically, is to think about the students and teachers who do not have the luxury of making mistakes, not even one minor mess up in a day not to mention three.  Absurd Expectations Academic pressures around perfectionism often have complex aspects.  Immigration, poverty, identity politics, the school to prison pipeline, and uneven preparation for graduate education from preschool to PhD contribute additional stress for some students who have to fight for a place at a table that likely was designed without “them” in mind. These same systemic pressures force some students and teachers to have to be perfect in unhealthy ways – no learning curve, no grace in student evaluations, no wiggle room for mistakes. If only we could connect the dots ahead of time, theological educators could better support colleagues and students who live and learn with such heightened anxiety.  “Would you rather imagine me be in prison or in school,” asked a DACA recipient who was talking with my class about the fragility of his citizenship status that pressures him to excel in all areas as a student. With a high school GPA above 4.0, multiple leadership experiences in school and extracurricular activities, and a model resume already at a young age, he recognizes the absurd expectations placed on him to be able to have a chance at keeping his family together. “Imagine,” writes bell hooks, “what it is like to be taught by a teacher who does not believe you are fully human [and therefore] really believes [you] are incapable of learning.”[3] It’s not hard for my DACA recipient friend and teacher to imagine. With my citizenship and other privileges, I commit to stretch my imagination to connect the dots so that no one is dehumanized in my classes, so that everyone has a chance to be good enough, to have overall good days, to thrive in their dreams. And yet the learning around that must be on-going rather than a static perfection. Dreaming of an Open Invitation to Good Enough Learning Days I’ve been imagining what it would look like to treat my syllabus, booklists, classroom space arrangements, and use of time, assignments, and discussions as working together to open a pathway for belonging when absurd expectations exclude some students from thriving. What does it feel like when everything is instead working well in a learning environment?  For me, on the best good enough learning days (1) I feel prepared enough, (2) students arrive prepared and energetic enough, (3) there is enough of a sense that the subject at hand matters deeply, (4) multiple voices and perspectives are voiced and heard, (5) students and I hear new connections and disconnections verbalized in the learning encounter, (6) unanticipated new insights and questions deepen conversation, (7) we are all still thinking about the class beyond the constraints of our time together in a classroom or online, and (8) something from the class may spill over into coffee conversations, office hours, semester assignments, even program assessment. On your best good enough learning days, what would you add? Indeed, such a day would really be a good enough learning day!  I conclude these reflections with some open questions for theological educators teaching religion in a politically challenging time. Are really good days available to all of the students in my class or the colleagues in my school? How about in your context? On each account, what are the avenues of participation for students and faculty? What are the roadblocks? What collaborations, accountabilities, self-reflection habits, and continuing education will help me connect as many dots as possible in advance of the class? How will I identify and respond to predictable misconnections in real time? How can theological educators work strategically in our own classrooms and across institutions to support dreamers’ thriving? [1] This blog follows from a previous blog entitled “The Privilege of Good Enough? Challenges of Radical Hospitality in Theological Education,” published November 9, 2017, at https://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/2017/11/privilege-good-enough-challenges-radical-hospitality-theological-education/ [2] I have in mind supporting the thriving dreams of all who embark in teaching and learning in hopes of honing critical tools and collaborative practices to address a suffering world yearning for new ideas and strategies of transformation.  I also have in mind Dreamers as the group of students who seek support for more humane immigration reform. I dedicate this blog to the tenacity of the Dreamers who teach me to work for systems that allow good enough teaching and learning to be available to all. For further information in this historical moment, download a toolkit to support Dreamers here: http://www.scholarshipsaz.org/students/educators/. [3] bell hooks, Teaching critical thinking. New York, NY: Routledge, 2010, p. 2.

A conservatory of music in my hometown annually brings to campus a famous singer who leads a master class for its voice students. This is a ticketed event open to the public and regularly draws a large audience. It’s simply fascinating to watch the singer teach. One by one, students come on stage, they perform pieces they have practiced for the occasion, and she offers her critique. Occasionally she offers a mini-lecture on some aspect of singing but mostly she makes students work certain sections of their pieces over and over, all the while offering correction, advice, and support. The audience hears how their music – which sounded pretty good, to begin with – improves with her coaching. While a master class is not the same thing as a studio, the two pedagogies share certain features. In my experience, teachers of religion and theology rarely make use of studio pedagogies; this book made me realize that we should. Studio pedagogy is typically defined by the following elements: lengthy design sessions conducted in large spaces where materials are readily available and works-in-progress can be publicly and permanently displayed. Instructors roam the space, stopping at individual desks to offer feedback that gets intentionally overheard by nearby students. Lectures and discussions are rare; studio pedagogy relies instead on coaching, modeling, correcting, responding, affirming or questioning choices, and occasionally offering on-demand content instruction. It combines authentic learning theory, constructivism, socialization into a profession, and the theories behind flipped classrooms and communities of practice. It shares features of other student-centered pedagogical approaches such as problem-based learning and service learning, although it focuses more on the process of students taking iterative steps toward a final, deliverable product of their own choice and making. This book is an edited volume presenting fifteen narratives by design instructors describing the studio courses they teach in fields like architecture, interior design, and instructional design. Contributors describe the joys, challenges, concerns, and vulnerabilities they have experienced through this sort of teaching. Overhearing their honest confessions and reactions is one pleasure of reading this book, and it gives the reader a taste of what being in a studio is like. This volume is also designed like a studio in that its editors explicitly eschew analysis and summary, preferring instead to “curate” the narratives and let readers draw their own conclusions. Indeed, religion and theology teachers might have to work hard to relate this book to their contexts. It will be most directly applicable to those in field education and those teaching certain kinds of performance or design – preaching, worship, ritual, or religious architecture. Yet its implications are valuable to all who are intrigued by non-native pedagogies. As I read, I kept asking myself, “Why do we keep our critique of student work private?” As one contributor points out, it is often when budding academics begin to share our work publicly that we take it more seriously, find it more gratifying, and believe it has value. Why shouldn’t our students experience the same?

Empowering Learners with Mobile Open-Access Learning Initiatives is a well-designed book giving an overview and awareness to mobile activities as they can be provided in an educational setting. The anthology was compiled by Michael Mills and Donna Wake, both from the University of Central Arkansas. Most of the studies are North American, but there is ample diversity of circumstances in the populations studied and techniques showcased. The book is separated into four parts: practice, curriculum, assessment, and theory. This book will likely become a historic piece of educational observation on today’s environment, but just as importantly, it is future-looking. So how is the future looking? The authors are clearly optimistic about the future of higher education. The evidence shows the effectiveness of mobile technologies to provide a more equal and motivated voice in society. Considering the Wabash Center for Teaching in Learning in Theology and Religion’s audience, this book would be most effective for those in curriculum development and assessment. It is easy to read, but scientifically formatted. Each chapter constitutes a separate study contributing to the overall discussion, and new vocabulary is introduced and defined at the conclusion of each chapter. The publisher, IGI Global, is an established publisher of Information Science and this text could be useful even as a textbook for courses in Information Science and Technology. The book could have been enhanced through a greater diversity of authorship and a wider distribution of geographical locations. Mobile technology is world-reaching, but much of this book’s arguments were grounded in a Western cultural understanding of the world. It would have been helpful for that to have been disclosed in the preface as a both a limitation of this volume and a signal for further study about student learning in online open-access models of education. There was some effort by the authors to attend to issues related to physical and learning disabilities and learning needs of underprivileged communities. However, the only examples the authors provide outside of the United States were Kenya and Portugal. The real value of the book is its comprehensive structure of presentation and approach to mobile technology as a discipline. It does not make light of the common lay person’s experience with mobile technology. Rather, there is a sense of power behind today’s and the future’s possibilities for reducing social barriers in education. Empowering Learners with Mobile Open-Access Learning Initiatives would be an excellent contribution to a higher education library, and that is said without hesitancy even when the examples of technology in the book could be somewhat fleeting given the rapid changes in technology and online learning.

Few words strike fear in the hearts of post-secondary teachers more than “assessment.” Most faculty in undergraduate and graduate-level education are better-versed in their own specializations than they are in the more administrative aspects of their schools. Assessment often feels like one of those top-down assignments that faculty must add to their workload in order to get ready for the next accreditation visit. Darla K. Deardorff provides relief from this fear by removing the mystery from the process of assessment. She places it within the healthy context of enabling teachers to see if their work is actually accomplishing what they intend for it to accomplish, and, on a broader scale, if the overall mission of the institution is being achieved. Deardorff takes time to define all of the technical terms so that even those who feel like novices in this domain understand the issues, making it an easy read. The second half of the book is comprised entirely of appendices, full of succinct guidelines on how to create and implement an assessment plan along with examples of tools and processes used at various schools. The book begins in an engaging manner by using several myths regarding assessment as a foil to make a case for the importance of doing assessment well. The second chapter then looks at thirty frequently asked questions about assessment. Once the reader finishes the first two chapters, he or she is prepared to find out more about the distinctive aspects of international education and learn what goes into creating an effective assessment program – from start, through implementation, and finally to evaluation and revision. Most of this book would serve as a practical guide for anyone involved in educational assessment, but Deardorff relates the book most specifically to those engaged in international education, by which she means “efforts that address the integration of international, intercultural, or global dimensions into education” (29). This includes schools with study abroad programs, those with a strong international student or faculty presence on campus, or even those that are actively engaged in preparing students to work in other cultures or simply be better global citizens. This adds a level of complexity to the assessment process that traditional models of assessment have not addressed. While many books on assessment are geared more toward institutional assessment in comparison with other institutions or benchmarks, Deardorff is focused on student learning outcomes and how one knows whether or not they are being achieved. Special attention is given to whether or not methods of measuring these outcomes are both valid and accurate. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to this kind of assessment, but the processes outlined in the book should help any institution create an assessment plan that is both feasible and useful. While it is vital that faculty be heavily involved in this process, a good assessment plan will involve multiple stakeholders, will be integrated into the ongoing program of the school, will make use of both indirect and direct methods of feedback, and will make use of well-planned rubrics.