Assessment at Coconino Community College
Coconino Community College recognizes the need for long-term commitment to assessment through leadership and strategic planning. Assessment is that process of learning how to improve, be better educators, and ensure the College students are progressing, gaining knowledge and skills, and preparing for their next steps. To ensure student learning is taking place, the College educators engaging in a wide variety of assessment activities as various levels which are used in data-informed decisions.
Utilizing a modified version of the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment Transparency Framework , this website provides an overview of Coconino Community College assessment activities and results.
Institutional Support of Assessment
Learning Services
Learning Services is an administrative group within the College that provides instructional supports in many areas, including assessment. While all members of the group can assist with assessment in varying degrees, there are particular positions whose core work closely aligns with supporting College educators' assessment work:
- Assessment & Faculty Development Coordinator is the first point of contact for work related to the assessment and reporting of student learning.
- Instructional Designer consults with faculty to effectively develop and deliver their courses which includes developing appropriate assessment tools.
- Associate Dean of Learning Services acts as the "go-to" person for curriculum questions and issues including the development of new student learning outcomes for newly proposed courses and programs.
Assessment Committee
The committee is comprised of representation from across the College: several full-time faculty across divisions, a Student Affairs representative, a Business Office representative, and two members of the Learning Services team. The purpose of this committee is "to support the College's commitment to education achievement and improvement through ongoing assessment of student learning [and]... review program review documents for the College." The committee's charter and meeting agendas and minutes are available through the College's "Committees" intranet page (login is required for access).
Resources for Assessment
Coconino Community College Assessment Manual
The Coconino Community College Assessment Handbook provides an overview of assessment at CCC, a glossary of common CCC assessment terms, and a few helpful assessment ideas.
About Assessment
It has been researched and reported that assessment, when done well, impacts educators and students alike and ultimately improves learning. By employing andragogy principles to set clear expectations in the form of learning outcomes, it sets the foundation for good assessment practices because it helps students focus their energy and time on what it truly important.
This leads to more meaningful and impactful learning. This focus also applies to the College's educators as assessment practices focus on three main questions:
- What do we want students to know and be able to do?
- How well do we want them to know it and be able to do it?
- How will we know when they know or do it?
These questions can be asked and answered at multiple levels within the College: course-level, program-level, and institutional-level. Answering these questions at multiple levels requires employing varying assessment practices and tools. All of which should be developed using the Association for the Assessment of Learning in Higher Education 's article 9 Principles of Good Practice for Assessing Student Learning .
Course-level Assessment Resources
Class-Level Assessment Informational Hand-out
The "Education and Learning Effectiveness" Canvas shell has been designed to provide an overview of assessment and specific information on faculty assessment responsibilities, improving student learning, course and section reporting at CCC, and using assessment results (login is required for access).
The Assessment Coordinator maintains a small library on books with various assessment techniques available for CCC faculty use such as Barbara Walvoord's Assessment Clear and Simple, Robert M. Diamond's Designing and Assessing Course and Curricula, Trudy Banta et al's Designing Effective Assessment and Assessment Essentials, and Angelo and Cross' Classroom Assessment Techniques.
Additionally, the College's library has access to various teaching and learning resources: Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education Series , e-books on teaching methods and materials in various disciplines , and access to various teaching and learning periodicals such as Assessment Update , Change , Educational Leadership , and more.
National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment , an organization dedicated to making learning outcomes usable and transparent, offers a "Assignment Library" for faculty looking for assignment examples within their disciplines.
Assessment Commons is a website filled with many links to resources across higher education outcomes assessment.
Learning Assessment Techniques are 50 easy-to-implement active learning techniques that are organized using Fink's Taxonomy of Significant Learning and embeds active learning techniques. These techniques are from Elizabeth F. Barkley and Claire Howell Major's book, Learning Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty.
Program-level Assessment Resources
The "Education and Learning Effectiveness" Canvas shell also has dedicated information regarding the purpose of program review, its cycle, and guides on how to complete the forms with data example. In additionally, each academic program has a specific module with the program's outcomes, assessment plans, curriculum maps, assessment data and results, and previous program review documents (login is required for access).
The Program Review Process page has additional information for non-academic and external stakeholder audiences that overview the process, the forms, and completed program review documents.