Good measures of student learning are scarce and all institutions are struggling with the challenge of effectively and reliably assessing student learning.  Nowhere is this challenge felt more strongly, however, than at the community college, where students enter with diverse education goals and are more likely to transfer, stop out, or even drop out. 

This makes the need for assessment methods of demonstrated value in the community college setting more critical than ever.  This new booklet  is designed to address this need, presenting for the first time between two covers some of the strongest illustrations of good practice that have appeared in the pages of the award-winning newsletter, Assessment Update.  Articles address such issues of concern to community college faculty and administrators as evaluating transfer success, the community and technical college students’ perceptions of student engagement, assessing learning communities, assessing employer needs, and the role of corporate partnerships in assessment.  Drawing on both faculty-created and standard measures, such as the Community College Student Experiences Questionnaire and the Community College Survey of Student Engagement, the authors explore the effectiveness of various approaches and how they can be used to make the kind of curricular changes that can lead to improved student- learning outcomes.

Other booklets in Assessment Update Collections:

Portfolio Assessment: Uses, Cases, Scoring, and Impact

This booklet contains a wealth of information on portfolios made available for the first time in this convenient format.  The articles explore how portfolios, including web-based portfolios, have been used at various institutions to assess and improve programs in general education, the major, advising, and overall institutional effectiveness.  They  describe ways portfolios can be scored, students’ perspectives on portfolios, how portfolios changed the faculty culture at one college, and more. 

Hallmarks of Effective Outcomes Assessment

This booklet brings together the best guidance and practices that have appeared in Assessment Update to illustrate time-tested principles for all aspects of assessment from planning and implementing to sustaining and improving assessment efforts over time.  Useful for those new to assessment as well as experienced practitioners, it details the specific hallmarks required for the success of any assessment program—from leadership and staff development to the assessment of processes as well as outcomes, ongoing communication among constituents, and more.  And it presents articles revealing what these hallmarks look like in practice.