A few days ago, I talked about preparing to give some books away for free. Well, I can’t give this one away, but you should go buy it anyway. The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture asked me about a year ago to do some workshops on assessment, which in the end had over 200 attendees from about 50 colleges and universities. So we decided that an assessment handbook might be in order, and have spent the past few months making one.
Although it’s aimed specifically at assessment methods that will be of use for architecture schools, it’s a simple guide for any school (or frankly, any organization at all) that wants to develop systematic ways to get better at the things they really want to do.
Assessment scares people, but it really shouldn’t. The cycle of assessment, from description to judgment to change, is a normal—and crucial—part of everyday life. Our new handbook describes both the practices and the opportunities of assessment.
Assessment can be an important lever for the pursuit of equity and inclusion, and for communication with stakeholders. Assessment can improve curricular alignment, and help your program to pursue your own unique mission. This plainspoken handbook is designed to help architecture programs at any level of development to create, improve, and make use of relevant and powerful systems of assessment.
The book is intended to be encouraging, to help your organization start somewhere and make some important and effective advances. So go pre-order one. If your school’s an ACSA member, it’s thirty bucks plus six for shipping; if you’re not an ACSA member, it’s forty plus six. And anybody can buy the electronic version that can be shared broadly across teams for a hundred. So go do one of those things. Right now. Go.
Herb Childress 