Universities across the nation have been called upon to provide evidence of student learning through direct means of assessment. Value-added assessment, which aims to document the development of student learning from the beginning of the university experience to the end, has been called “accountability’s new frontier” by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. In response to an internal university initiative, the Department of Sociology at the University of North Dakota conducted a value-added assessment of the sociology major. In this article, the authors describe the value-added approach and its strengths and limitations, detail the means by which they assessed student knowledge in the sociology major, and review findings from their student assessment at the University of North Dakota.
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