“We Don’t Do This Work Alone”: Assessment as Community Act, or What Total Loss Teaching Offers to Contemporary Assessment and Evaluation Practices in Higher Education

Abstract

Assessment and evaluation are often highly individual and comparative practices, but what if we radically transform assessment to support a community-based pedagogy? This article explores this question by examining assessment practices experienced in Total Loss Teaching, a pedagogy practiced at a small, church-related liberal arts school from 1994 until 2014 within a working group of teachers across three departments. Historical documentation of the pedagogy is interwoven with its impact on alumni, including the author, and explores the possibilities of considering assessment as a community act, integral to pedagogy, for contemporary higher education.