Environmental and organizational characteristics affecting the implementation of comprehensive assessment systems in community colleges.

Abstract

This study investigates the environmental and organizational characteristics that affect a community college's ability to implement a comprehensive assessment system. Assessing student learning has become a significant issue in higher education, but little attention has been paid to those characteristics that support or weaken an institution's ability to implement a comprehensive assessment system. To examine those characteristics, this study develops a conceptual framework that identifies external conditions, internal demographic conditions, and internal information processing conditions. This study is based on an original survey, and the population was defined as two-year colleges accredited by the North Central Association. All 325 public, two-year colleges within the boundaries of the North Central Association were invited to participate in the study. A letter was sent to each college Chief Executive Officer asking for permission to survey faculty and staff at the college and requesting that the CEO identify an institutional assessment expert/contact person. From this population, 233 colleges volunteered to participate in the study (72% of the population). Eventually, 181 colleges returned the survey (78% of the volunteers and 56% of the population). Data analysis procedures included factor analysis to reduce to variables to a manageable number of indices, correlations and analysis of variance to examine relationships among the dependent and independent variables, and forced stepwise regression analyses to determine the predictive value of the indices. Based on these analytical procedures, four key findings were made. For the dependent variable, the existence of a longitudinal assessment system, it was determined that most colleges do not have developed fully comprehensive systems. In addition, colleges are using multiple means to assess student learning. For the independent variables, the following was found: (a) the external degree of mandate variables exert a significant influence on a college's assessment behavior. The effect of the North Central Association is slight. On the other hand, the effect of state mandate and type of state governance is significant. (b) the internal demographic characteristic of availability of resources overall had very little effect. (c) the internal information processing conditions, which were comprised of five indices--organizational leadership, faculty involvement, organizational trust, informational richness, and informational processes--accounted for 34.5%. Leadership works in a foundational way to the other information processing indices.