Although assessment is a nationwide phenomenon, there is great variance among community colleges in the sctent to which assessment is occumng, faculty are involved, student accomplishments are measured, and assessment results are usedfor improving programs and services.As is clear from the title, the intent of this chapter is to attempt to provide a comprehensive perspective on assessment in community colleges. I have interpreted ths as a charge to deliver a progress report on how far community colleges have come in our efforts to assess student learning and outcomes. It would be interesting, and perhaps useful, to extend this analysis to assessment of institutional effectiveness overall, but such an exercise is outside the scope of this chapter, hence the emphasis on assessment of student outcomes.Over the last several years, I have spent considerable time reading, writing, speaking, and talking to faculty and administrators in community colleges about assessment. It is from these experiences that I will try to provide this overall perspective. First, however, it is important to briefly set the context for this progress report and to note some of the factors that make assessment of student outcomes a much more difficult task for those in two-year colleges than for those in four-year colleges and universities.In addition to the barriers faced by all of us in higher education as we try to implement assessment programs, such as faculty resistance, t y n g to find ways to motivate students to put forth credible effort on assessments of leaming outcomes, and the lack of sufficient resources to do the job, community colleges must also deal with some particularly difficult problems. As I have noted on several previous occasions (Seybert, 1990), assessing student outcomes (and, more generally, institutional effectiveness) is especially difficult for NEW DlRECnONS FOR COMMUNITY COLLEGES, no. 88. Winter 1994 0 Jos5cy-k Publishm 23 24 ASSESSMENT AND TESTING
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