On my campus, the business of assessment of academic programs has been in full-swing for a decade and has recently become institutionalized. But now assessment has run head-long into another, newer trend on college campuses: collaborative learning communities. Learning communities are desirable educational constructs, because of their broader appeal to learners of diverse backgrounds and abilities.

However, even when assessment is configured to accommodate the non-traditional learner, it has the difficulty found in any linear analysis of diverse parameters. Sometimes quite subtle qualitative features of multiple dimensions are what need to be assessed. This is only compounded when you are trying to assess these in a learning community which exists in an online environment.

This roundtable will try to investigate the following: 1) What exactly should be assessed in an online learning community, and how does it differ from what should be examined in the traditional college environment? 2) What are the appropriate conditions in which this assessment should be performed? 3) What instrument or model of assessment can be configured to the online learning community?