The value-added assessment of higher education learning: The case of the Nagoya University of Commerce and Business in Japan

Abstract

Assessment of higher education learning has been considered increasingly important. One of the current trends in this field is the value-added assessment¾how much students learn during a certain period of time at university. In the United States, for example, Arum and Roksa (2011) conducted a large-scale assessment on second-year university students’ learning with the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) to examine how much university students improved generic skills during the first two years of higher education. Findings suggested that they did not improve much. The researchers concluded that the poor result was attributed to the fact that American university students on average study only 12 hours a week. In Japan, the situation may be even worse as Japanese university students on average study 3.5 hours, much less than their cohorts in the United States. However, studies on the value-added assessment of Japanese university students’ learning are scarce. With the Progress Report on Generic Skills (PROG), an assessment tool similar to CLA, as well as interviews with students who took PROG, this study examines how much students improved generic skills at a Japanese university during the first two years of higher education.