A Brief History

wenty years ago, most college faculty members, when considering the topic of assessment, would have said that assessment was a passing trend that would go the way of the "twelve-hour teaching load." College faculty now know how wrong that conclusion would have been. Not only is assessment here to stay, but it is an ever evolving and growing institutional reality that has the potential to inform educational practice and impact student learning both in the classroom and at the institutional level.

Harold Washington College (HWC), one of the City Colleges of Chicago, is committed to upholding high institutional and academic standards and to understanding and improving student learning. The mission of the college is to sustain an environment that promotes optimal learning for all students, to gather and use assessment information to improve student learning, and to offer its students affordable and accessible opportunities for academic advancement, career development, and personal enrichment (Harold Washington College, 2003-2006 Catalog). Although the college's assessment program has gone through many substantial changes over the past ten years, the college has been continually committed to improving student learning outcomes through a better and more comprehensive system of institutionalized assessment.

Senior faculty report that even though they did not call it "assessment," good teachers have always prioritized student learning and have worked to improve student learning outcomes. At some level, assessment has been happening since the beginning of teaching and learning. Every examination of student learning made by a faculty member at the end of a term with the intention of doing something different the following term in order to improve student learning falls into the general area of assessment. This kind of assessment at the classroom, department, and program levels has been a part of any credible instructional program. Unfortunately, it was not until assessment became institutionalized that it has become recognized as an instrumental tool in bettering the learning process.

Dr. Cecilia Lopez, formerly the Associate Director of the Higher Learning Commission (1991-2003) joined the HWC community as Vice-President of Academic Affairs in the spring of 2003. Dr. Lopez assumed leadership of the Assessment Committee and infused it with new life. The original committee, with the support of administration, invited all faculty to get involved in the new assessment committee efforts. It was crucial that the committee was made up of faculty members from each program and/or department, that it include administration and distance learning representation, and that it have a student voice. In order to gain momentum, meetings were called weekly, and the committee hit the ground running. Under the guidance and expertise of Dr. Lopez, the committee and its goals began to take shape.

Work Begins

The first order of business for the Assessment Committee was to establish cross-disciplinary sub-committees charged with the task of redefining the general education objectives of the college. Each general education objective was to be looked at by a separate cross-disciplinary committee. This work began as a one-day workshop held during registration week in the summer of 2003. As evidenced from the large turnout at this voluntary meeting, faculty were inspired to begin the process of cross-disciplinary dialogue. For many, it was a first opportunity to share ideas about teaching and learning with their colleagues who were experts in varyious academic disciplines. As a result of this workshop and the work that followed, the sub-committees were invigorated, the general education objectives of the college were defined, and student learning outcomes were written. As the college moved into the fall semester, the committee understood that it needed a written charge or constitution in order to continue its work and to be recognized as a legitimate body within the college. This was easier said than done. Members understood that the committee needed to be faculty driven. The charge needed to define the roles and responsibilities of its membership and the relationships between the committee and other governing bodies in the college.

Immediately prior to Dr. Lopez's leadership, a full-time, tenured faculty member had chaired the Assessment Committee on a voluntary basis. Already, the committee knew that the workload for the Chair would require release time. The weekly meetings and the plans for active, on-going assessment required a weekly commitment commensurate with a full-time position. In fact, it was discovered that it is not unusual for the Chair of a college or university Assessment Committee to be granted full-time release for the position. As a result of these considerations, the Chair at HWC was granted 6 hours of release time from a 15-hour teaching load. It was also established that there be a Vice-Chair and that the committee have membership from each department. In addition, the Assessment Committee would have joint standing with student, faculty, and administrative entities in the deliberations of the Faculty Council.

CCTST

The newly formed committee decided its first priority would be a college-wide assessment activity to assess the general education objective "to think critically and to analyze and solve problems" (Harold Washington College, 2003-2006 Catalog, p.128). The committee examined no fewer than 15 available measures of critical thinking skills before agreeing that the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST) best suited the needs of the college. Committee members decided that faculty could choose to volunteer to administer the test to their students. It was thought that, rather than having administration mandate involvement, faculty buy-in would be stronger and more sincere if instructors actively chose to participate. Much to the joy and surprise of the committee, over 80 faculty members volunteered to participate, resulting in the testing of over 1600 students.

A number of logistical problems were encountered in the administration of the test. The Committee had hoped students could be divided into cohorts, based on credits taken at the college, and competencies could be measured and compared across cohorts. Unfortunately, it was not possible to create the cohorts based on credits. Instead, adjustments were made after the test was given, which necessitated hours of hand-processing each test. It was also discovered that in the scoring process the college could not be compared directly to like-institutions, i.e. urban and ethnically diverse, because this information was not available from the test-makers. However, in the end, the results created a baseline against which the college could measure itself in the future.

Testing revealed HWC students performed, across the board, lower than the national average, but only slightly. That prompted the Committee to create a brochure to explain the results to the students, faculty, and administration. The brochure also provided students with the information necessary to acquire their personal test results. Because HWC students had performed lower than the national average on the CCTST, the Committee decided that more emphasis was needed to enhance critical thinking across the disciplines. Related to that, the committee decided that professional development for faculty in the area of critical thinking was appropriate. A one-day faculty workshop was developed, and over 60 faculty members attended. The workshop was organized and designed by faculty for faculty in an effort to continue to strengthen the support of critical thinking skills in students. Topics of the workshop included Socratic Dialogues, Critical Thinking and the Brain, and Writing to Support Critical Thinking. Three months following the workshop, the college invited Dr. Peter Facione, one of the authors of the CCTST, to speak to the faculty. These events were sponsored by the Assessment Committee and financially supported by HWC administration.

SAILS

The second priority of the Assessment Committee was to assess the general education objective of using information resources and technology competently. The interdisciplinary sub-committee charged with defining this objective and researching appropriate assessment tools chose the Standardized Assessment of Information Literacy Skills (SAILS), developed by Kent State. This on-line survey was quite different from the CCTST, primarily because it was on-line and therefore heavily dependent on technologically savvy people for its set up. Fortunately, the college has people who are both able and willing to support these efforts.

The SAILS test was administered by a group of volunteer faculty in the computer lab. Due to space, computer availability, and monitoring restraints, the test could be administered to only one class of students at a time over the course of one week. Other problems arose due to the fact that faculty had to move their classes into the lab in order to conduct the test. Some students disappeared during the transition from classroom to lab, a few faculty forgot about their assigned times, and faculty who expected students to come directly to the lab discovered that a few students did not know how to find the lab. Even with these difficulties, by the end of the testing week, 777 students had participated in SAILS. The committee was pleased that HWC student results were comparable to national averages. As of this writing, the Committee has yet to decide what to do with the results. It is clear that the college should aspire to more than average achievement.

As we bring the assessment process full-circle, the Committee must consider how faculty training can impact student learning in the area of information literacy. Traditionally, information technology skills were the specialties of librarians in the areas of library science and research; but because modern scholarship requires that technology be embedded in every course, all faculty will benefit from professional development in the area of technology.

CCSSE

In March of 2005, HWC will participate in an institution-wide survey of student engagement and satisfaction through the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) This survey was brought to committee attention by colleagues at Loyola University Chicago, who were looking for ways to generate their own data about a new program entitled Community College Learning and Teaching (CCLT). The CCLT program is supported by the Fund for the Improvement of Post Secondary Education (FIPSE) and is a partnership between Loyola University and Harold Washington College. It involves specialized, graduate level instruction for community college faculty in which concentrated study related to the community college and its student population is pursued. Loyola University was looking to describe the level of engagement of Harold Washington students who were associated with faculty involved in the CCLT program. Student engagement is an indication of how connected students feel to their instructors, to their peers, and to their college. It is believed that the more engaged students are, the better they perform academically.

Because Loyola University was supporting HWC's involvement in the survey, the Assessment Committee decided to use the CCSSE as an opportunity to gather its own data about student engagement. Two other programs in the college, Child Development and Art, chose to sample their courses in order to acquire baseline data for self-studies in the accreditation process.

Lessons Learned

As the Harold Washington College Assessment Committee reviews its work thus far and plans for future activities, it affirms the following ideas, which it has learned through experience and which will guide future efforts.

1. No measure is perfect. There are problems with each tool: some significant, others less so. If you wait to find or create the perfect tool, you will not get underway.
   
2. Voluntary participation is critical to success. Faculty buy-in strengthens the mission and provides the framework necessary to get the work done.
   
3. Financial support must be established. Assessment costs money. Good assessment costs a lot of money.
   
4. The committee must create solid ways of communicating its work to the college's constituents. Keeping everyone informed should be an underlying goal of the work. Consider a monthly newsletter devoted solely to assessment issues.
   
5. The data generated from assessment activities must be used to improve student learning. Otherwise, the process is meaningless.

Jennifer Asimow, M.Ed., is Assistant Professor of Child Development at Harold Washington College and Chair of the Assessment Committee. She may be reached at jasimow@ccc.edu.

Raymonda Johnson is Professor Emeritus of the Department of English and Speech at Harold Washington College and an Ed.D. student in Educational Organization and Leadership in the Community College Executive Leadership Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She may be reached at rtjohnso@uiuc.edu.