Hamish Coates is a Professor of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne, Australia. His research and development focuses on improving quality and productivity. He has initiated and led many successful projects, and was Founding International Director of OECD’s Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO).Olga Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia is Chair of Business and Economics Education at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany. She has published widely on empirical educational research in vocational and higher education. She is a member of many national and international advisory and editorial boards and serves as an expert consultant to ministries, foundations, and international journals.Hans Anand Pant is a Full Professor and chair of Research Methods in Education at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Germany. He is also CEO of The German School Academy, an institution for school development and teacher training founded by the Robert Bosch Stiftung. The focus of his work is on educational reform, innovation transfer, educational large-scale assessment, and validity issues in competence testing.

• Introduction. Assessing student learning outcomes in higher education: challenges and international perspectives 1. Assessing student learning outcomes internationally: insights and frontiers 2. Assessing critical thinking in higher education: the HEIghten™ approach and preliminary validity evidence 3. On the practices and challenges of measuring higher education value added: the case of Colombia 4. Assessing scientific reasoning: a comprehensive evaluation of item features that affect item difficulty 5. Comparing future teachers’ beliefs across countries: approximate measurement invariance with Bayesian elastic constraints for local item dependence and differential item functioning 6. Student motivation in low-stakes assessment contexts: an exploratory analysis in engineering mechanics 7. Developing instruments to assess and compare the quality of engineering education: the case of China and Russia 8. Macroeconomic knowledge of higher education students in Germany and Japan – a multilevel analysis of contextual and personal effects

Hamish Coates is a Professor of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne, Australia. His research and development focuses on improving quality and productivity. He has initiated and led many successful projects, and was Founding International Director of OECD’s Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO).Olga Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia is Chair of Business and Economics Education at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany. She has published widely on empirical educational research in vocational and higher education. She is a member of many national and international advisory and editorial boards and serves as an expert consultant to ministries, foundations, and international journals.Hans Anand Pant is a Full Professor and chair of Research Methods in Education at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Germany. He is also CEO of The German School Academy, an institution for school development and teacher training founded by the Robert Bosch Stiftung. The focus of his work is on educational reform, innovation transfer, educational large-scale assessment, and validity issues in competence testing.

• Introduction. Assessing student learning outcomes in higher education: challenges and international perspectives 1. Assessing student learning outcomes internationally: insights and frontiers 2. Assessing critical thinking in higher education: the HEIghten™ approach and preliminary validity evidence 3. On the practices and challenges of measuring higher education value added: the case of Colombia 4. Assessing scientific reasoning: a comprehensive evaluation of item features that affect item difficulty 5. Comparing future teachers’ beliefs across countries: approximate measurement invariance with Bayesian elastic constraints for local item dependence and differential item functioning 6. Student motivation in low-stakes assessment contexts: an exploratory analysis in engineering mechanics 7. Developing instruments to assess and compare the quality of engineering education: the case of China and Russia 8. Macroeconomic knowledge of higher education students in Germany and Japan – a multilevel analysis of contextual and personal effects

Hamish Coates is a Professor of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne, Australia. His research and development focuses on improving quality and productivity. He has initiated and led many successful projects, and was Founding International Director of OECD’s Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO).Olga Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia is Chair of Business and Economics Education at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany. She has published widely on empirical educational research in vocational and higher education. She is a member of many national and international advisory and editorial boards and serves as an expert consultant to ministries, foundations, and international journals.Hans Anand Pant is a Full Professor and chair of Research Methods in Education at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Germany. He is also CEO of The German School Academy, an institution for school development and teacher training founded by the Robert Bosch Stiftung. The focus of his work is on educational reform, innovation transfer, educational large-scale assessment, and validity issues in competence testing.

• Introduction. Assessing student learning outcomes in higher education: challenges and international perspectives 1. Assessing student learning outcomes internationally: insights and frontiers 2. Assessing critical thinking in higher education: the HEIghten™ approach and preliminary validity evidence 3. On the practices and challenges of measuring higher education value added: the case of Colombia 4. Assessing scientific reasoning: a comprehensive evaluation of item features that affect item difficulty 5. Comparing future teachers’ beliefs across countries: approximate measurement invariance with Bayesian elastic constraints for local item dependence and differential item functioning 6. Student motivation in low-stakes assessment contexts: an exploratory analysis in engineering mechanics 7. Developing instruments to assess and compare the quality of engineering education: the case of China and Russia 8. Macroeconomic knowledge of higher education students in Germany and Japan – a multilevel analysis of contextual and personal effects