Interviews can gather perceptions of learning, opinions about learning or reflections on learning from faculty, employers, and students.  Interviews do not allow students to directly demonstrate their learning, so they are called indirect assessments.  Interviews allow deep exploration of an individual's experience.  Because of this, they are extremely time consuming and typically only a small number of people can be interviewed due to resource limitations.  The selection of interviewees is extremely important for minimizing bias.  Interviews are excellent for deepening understanding of issues identified using surveys.

Below are a few ideas that may help you decide if interviews are an appropriate measure in your program's assessment plan.

• General guidelines for conducting interviews
• The four stages of conducting an interview