Book Review: Capacity for Meaningful Learning Assessment in Community Colleges

Meaningful & Sustainable Learning Assessment

The purpose of this book is to share what I have learned from my research and professional experience, with the hope that you will discover, as I did, some useful insights about community college capacity to establish meaningful and sustainable learning assessment processes. Through my research I have identified 10 factors that form the foundation on which to build meaningful and sustainable student learning assessment processes.  It is my contention that if institutions know of and carefully attend to these critical foundation blocks, success in establishing a meaningful and sustainable learning assessment process is much more likely. I also posit that, by focusing on these foundational factors, community colleges will conserve resources by not wasting time, energy, and dollars on factors that have only minimal or modest influence.  Further, I believe that many secondary and tertiary issues will be resolved as a result of attending to these primary factors. 

The first three chapters of the book provide a context to understand the importance of learning assessment, the forces that have contributed to the learning assessment movement and the progress of community colleges in implementing assessment processes. Chapter four aggregates the opinions of assessment professionals about the important elements needed for learning assessment to be successful.  Their perceptions formed the initial material in the search for the most important factors.  Chapter five describes 10 essential institutional characteristics for meaningful learning assessment and the research methods that identified them.   Chapter six presents the College Characteristics for Meaningful Learning Assessment (CCMLA) inventory, which is based on research that identified the 10 institutional characteristics.  Community colleges will find this instrument useful for self-evaluation. 

Assessment Roles & Responsibilities

An outgrowth of the research is the delineation of the roles and responsibilities of those involved in assessment.  Chapter seven describes the specific responsibilities of college presidents, vice presidents, mid-level managers, faculty senate leaders, faculty members, learning assessment coordinators and staff, and the learning assessment committee.  Each has unique and complementary roles if the assessment process is to be meaningful and sustainable.  Chapter eight situates the student learning assessment as one important element within curriculum design and faculty professional development.  In the context of this last chapter, I offer some final thoughts and recommendations.

Those who will find this book particularly useful will be individuals who oversee the learning assessment process at their institutions.  Knowing the influential factors, college faculty and administrative leaders will be better able to evaluate and improve their capacity to assess learning outcomes.  Accreditors will find this work particularly useful in that it provides a structure to determine if certain critical institutional characteristics are in place that will support a meaningful and sustainable assessment process.  Professors and students of community college/higher education leadership programs will find this work useful for understanding the forces contributing to the learning assessment movement, the progress of community colleges in establishing learning assessment processes, the essential elements that serve as support pillars of learning assessment, and the roles and responsibilities of community college leaders for a meaningful and sustainable student learning assessment process.

Book Available Free

This book is available for download at http://jasomerville.com/resources at no charge as long as the conditions of the licensing agreement are followed.