An Assessment Framework for the Community College - Students attend
community colleges for a variety of reasons, yet at the heart of each of
these reasons is the desire to improve skills, increase knowledge, or
change attitudes. Read about how a white paper drafted by a team of
community college practitioners and assessment industry experts establishes
an assessment framework to address these desires, in the October Learning
Abstracts. Vice President Susan Salvador served on the team that developed the white paper.
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An Assessment Framework for the Community College
Through the collaboration of a dedicated advisory team of community college
practitioners and assessment industry experts, the League for Innovation in
the Community College and Questionmark Corporation have facilitated a white
paper titled “An Assessment Framework for the Community College: Measuring
Student Learning and Achievement as a Means of Demonstrating Institutional
Effectiveness.”
This team worked diligently through meetings, email correspondence, and
conference calls to develop the philosophy, content, and structure of the
Assessment Framework for the Community College. Questionmark Corporation
committed resources to the project to draft the paper, facilitate meetings,
and produce the final copy. The paper is labeled Version 1.0, indicating
that the framework will continue to evolve as educators apply its concepts
and principles and identify ways in which to improve and expand its focus.
A complete version of this white paper is available on both the League
(https://www.league.org/publication/whitepapers/0804.html) and the
Questionmark (https://questionmark.com/us/whitepapers/index.htm) websites.
The goal of this paper is to establish an Assessment Framework for the
Community College and to contextualize that framework within the concept of
the Learning College. A major premise of the paper is that the assessment
of student learning can generate data to support continuous improvement
efforts necessary for documenting institutional effectiveness.
It must be noted that institutional effectiveness may be measured in a
number of areas, such as graduation, retention, job placement, number and
effectiveness of student services, management and administrative structure,
and physical infrastructure; while measurement in these areas is critical,
it is intentionally not the focus of this paper. Rather, this paper focuses
on the measurement of student learning and development throughout learning
processes that take place both inside and outside the physical and virtual
classrooms.
Students attend community colleges for a variety of reasons – to earn a
degree, earn a certificate, obtain transfer credits, develop specific
skills through one or two courses – yet at the heart of each of these
reasons is the desire to improve skills, increase knowledge, or change
attitudes. Skills, knowledge, and attitudes may be affected through
instructional programs inside physical and virtual classrooms or through
student service activities outside of the classroom setting. Regardless of
where the learning is taking place, measuring learning will help an
institution gauge whether or not students are achieving their educational
goals. If learning can be documented at the student level, then it is
possible to aggregate assessment data in ways to provide information at the
course, program, division, and institutional levels. In this way,
assessment data gathered at the student level may be used to promote
continuous improvement efforts, which over time will yield documentation
for institutional effectiveness.
In some college settings, where the student population is constantly
changing, assessment data is not as useful at the student level as it is at
the aggregate level. In these settings, aggregate data can be used to
benefit the curriculum and faculty development opportunities important to
continuous improvement initiatives.
While assessment data provides beneficial information to instructors and
administrators, students also benefit directly and indirectly from
assessment results. Through the appropriate use of assessments, students
receive direct feedback on their educational progress, helping them take
ownership of and understand critical next steps in their educational plan.
Students are also the beneficiaries of college, program, and course-level
continuous improvement efforts supported and sustained through the
systematic collection and analysis of assessment data.
In support of the measurement of student learning, the assessment framework
will provide an assessment vocabulary, implementation processes, and
methods for data generation and reporting. The framework does not intend to
prescribe one assessment methodology for measuring student learning;
instead, the framework should be viewed as a set of building blocks and
best practices that can be assembled, modified, or shaped to a particular
institution's integrated approach to learning, teaching, and assessment.
Similarly, the vocabulary is intended to provide a baseline of terms.
Colleges should use the definitions to establish a common understanding
among stakeholders so that, if necessary, college-specific definitions may
be developed. The goal of the assessment framework is to provide a
foundation of terms, processes, and procedures so that all stakeholders
involved with the development or consumption of assessment results may
operate from a common understanding.
Dr. Susan Salvador
Office for Student Services
11/09/2004 |