Anthropology departments are increasingly faced with the challenge of developing assessment strategies to document and assess student learning as it relates to university‐ and state‐level learning objectives. This article draws on the work in applied anthropology as it relates to assessment and team‐based qualitative data analysis to develop and test a model for mapping assessment in higher education. It introduces a model for aligning course learning objectives with departmental, university, and state‐level goals and assessing student performance across multiple sections of an introductory anthropology course that contains different assignments, ethnographies, and exams. Based on case study data, this research shows how qualitative methods developed for team‐based research can be applied to sustain instructor creativity in the area of pedagogy while coordinating assessment.