Tests take hard look at CCSN programs

Jennifer Knight

Tuesday, May 29, 2001 | 10:39 a.m.

Before the semester came to a close at the Community College of Southern Nevada, students had one last test to take in English 102 and for once, it had nothing to do with their grades.

Instead, the test was a measure of how well the college was doing in delivering on their promise to teach students.

The term is called student outcomes. It is a popular notion in higher education that instead of just measuring student performance, institutions need to measure themselves.

"We're not assessing the student," said Janice Reid, chairwoman of the Liberal Arts department at CCSN. "We're not assessing the professors. We're assessing the program."

At CCSN's Liberal Arts department, English students about to graduate were given a 21-item multiple-choice test that covered literature concepts and English terms.

Committee members followed up by randomly sampling about 200 student papers.

By gathering this type of information in random samples, educators hope to get a broader picture of how well their programs are operating.

But assessment is not enough. The new focus in education is outcome, or tangible results.

All over Nevada, higher education institutions must not only evaluate themselves, but also prove that those evaluations are leading to change. It is part of a push by the regional board that accredits Nevada schools to meet new, more rigorous standards that ask for accountability in higher education.

"They have to provide evidence that the outcomes are being achieved," said Larry Stevens, deputy executive director of Commission on Colleges and Universities of the Northwest Association of Schools, Colleges and Universities, which accredits Nevada's institutions.

The new requirement to prove outcomes will be in place this September, and institutions are rushing to figure out how to do it.

"There's no doubt this is a massive undertaking, but it's exactly what we're asking K-12 to do," said Jane Nichols, Nevada's chancellor of higher education. "It does mean that institutions have to redefine what its goals are. But if you only measure the goal, then what good does it do to set it?"

While accreditation is voluntary, universities and colleges depend on it to give their programs credibility and attract new students.

Departments at UNLV have sent out student satisfaction surveys, formed assessment committees, sampled student papers, exams and collected course outlines in core classes to judge effectiveness of their programs.

But those evaluations have not been used to change programs.

"It's fine to gather all of this data, but they want to see what you can do with it," said Barbara Cloud, UNLV's associate provost for academic affairs and chairwoman of the assessment committee.

Cloud said it is hard to know what to do with all of that information and how to implement change. UNLV is also struggling with how to take a look at the bigger picture of not just how each department is doing, but how the whole university is doing.

The institution does give a big picture look at its goals. Just read UNLV's mission statement. It promises that students will "acquire the knowledge and common experiences that enhance critical thinking, leadership skills, aesthetic sensitivity and social integrity."

"As far as proving whether we are meeting our mission, we haven't gotten there yet," Cloud said. The struggle to come up with accurate and useful evaluations of institutions is being dealt with nationwide, said Victor Borden, author of "Measuring Quality: Choosing Among Surveys and Other Assessments of College Quality."

"Colleges and universities are very large and complex multiple businesses," Borden said. "They don't do one thing, they do a lot of things. The more complex it is, the tougher it is to summarize it."

Unlike other trends in higher education, this one toward measurements came from the public. Parents and legislators worried they weren't getting what they paid for, and the media began to spotlight accountability, Borden said.

U.S. News and World Report became a major player by turning out a yearly college ranking, and the snowball began to roll, he said.

"There was a period when the cost of education was rising much higher than the cost of inflation," Cloud recalled. "I guess a lot of this came from that and legislators wanted to see more bang for their buck."

Borden said that while it is a big chore, the task set out by accreditation boards -- "assess your institution, give us the results and then change what's wrong" -- is doable.

California and Hawaii are doing it by putting together a portfolio of evidence that breaks down the mission, then proves they are accomplishing it.

In the North Central part of the nation, institutions are performing quality audits of their programs.

UNLV and CCSN will be judged on their efforts to measure outcomes by the regional accreditation board when they come up for review next year.

Officials at both organizations, when asked about that judgment, say only "they are working on it."