Instructors are increasingly using interactive student response systems (SRS) to foster active learning and deepen student understanding in statistics education. Yet most studies focus on either the benefits of SRS or on how "students" can receive and use feedback, rather than on how "instructors" can use formative assessment…

Set in a freshman composition course using Blackboard for all assessments, this study considered aggregate data to investigate associations among formative assessment variables with the development of college writing skills. The study population was linguistically diverse students enrolled in a metropolitan community college in the Northeast…

Using administrative data from nearly 270,000 transfer-intending students who began at 70 community colleges across three state systems, this paper seeks to identify a set of metrics that will be useful to community college leaders as they formatively assess their colleges' efforts to improve STEM transfer outcomes. We find that a relatively…

College students are frequently unprepared for the rigor involved in reading college-level materials. The purpose of this quantitative, quasi-experimental study was to analyze students' reading performance in contextualized and decontextualized reading courses over the period of one semester in a community college setting to determine the impact…

The purpose of this evaluation was to provide descriptive feedback to assist coordinators of the Alabama Community College System's (ACCS) outcome-based funding (OBF) model in conducting a formative needs assessment. Employing a quasi-experimental design, this evaluation utilized both the CIPP decision-oriented and Stake's participant-oriented…

As an alternative to Hunt et al.'s (1997) general guidelines for strategic planning and Chance and William's (2009) summative rubric for evaluating university strategic plans, this article proposes a new rubric, the Rubric for Formatively Assessing Strategic Plans in Higher Education. The purpose of this new rubric is to provide institutional…

The success of an ePortfolio initiative is dependent on the willingness of departmental leaders and faculty members to collaborate in the design of ePortfolio curricular and programmatic policies. This qualitative research study examined faculty members' perceptions of an ePortfolio initiative designed for preservice teachers within a community…

Concerns of equity with respect to the community college model in East Asia persist in educational research. In this study, we described and analysed students' "lived experience" in community colleges in Hong Kong in terms of the "warming up" or "cooling out" of their educational desire. Semistructured interviews with…

In writing studies research, automated writing evaluation technology is typically examined for a specific, often narrow purpose: to evaluate a particular writing improvement measure, to mine data for changes in writing performance, or to demonstrate the effectiveness of a single technology and accompanying validity arguments. This article adopts a…

This chapter illustrates the value of formative assessment as the key to better understand students who struggle with classroom learning. The authors present ways in which professional development, classroom assessment, and student services can come together with the common goal of building a community focused on the student learning experience…

In this study, conceptual and algebra-based physics students were engaged in scientific inquiry using Physics Education Technology (PhET) interactive simulations via semester-long group projects. The instructor and students used the Scientific Abilities Assessment Rubrics (SAAR) to evaluate project presentations and papers (formative assessment).…

In writing studies research, automated writing evaluation technology is typically examined for a specific, often narrow purpose: to evaluate a particular writing improvement measure, to mine data for changes in writing performance, or to demonstrate the effectiveness of a single technology and accompanying validity arguments. This article adopts a…

This phenomenological study examined the lived experience of community college faculty champions of learning outcomes assessment. This study sought to elucidate the experiences of faculty champions of assessment by exploring both what the participants experienced as well as how they experienced their roles in leading assessment work on their…

North Carolina's community colleges redesigned developmental math programs in 2011. The overall effectiveness of the redesign has not yet been evaluated. A concurrent mixed-methods study was conducted at Mid-Atlantic Community College (MACC) for a formative and summative evaluation of the redesigned program. Mezirow's transformative learning…

Nearly two decades into the "completion agenda" in higher education, many community colleges have adopted collegewide reforms designed to improve stubbornly flat rates of student success and address persistent equity gaps. The longer-term effects of such collegewide reforms may take years to observe. In the meantime, college leaders need…