Over the past 10 to 15 years, as the nation has discussed the high cost of a college education and the worth of the college degree and experience, community college has become a first-choice experience for many traditional college-aged students. Assessment and accountability occupy center stage in current discussions of higher education, and…

Multimodal writing is considered as a "new" way of composing, or, somewhat cynically, as a strategy for adding relevance or interest to a required composition course. Jody Shipka's "A Multimodal Task-Based Framework for Composing" suggests that "students' uptakes of a much wider, richer repertoire of semiotic resources,…

Research conducted by the Community College Research Center (CCRC) and others was criticized in an article by Alexandros M. Goudas and Hunter R. Boylan (2012) published in the "Journal of Developmental Education," Volume 36, Issue 1. They raise specific contentions related to the methodology applied in the CCRC studies, the review of…

This final chapter provides observations about institutional research in community colleges derived from the preceding chapters and the issue editors' own experiences. Taken as a whole, the chapters in this issue, as well as the editors' experiences, suggest several observations about institutional research in community colleges. These include the…

In 2007, the College Board's Community College Advisory Panel--a group of college presidents that advises the organization's membership on community college issues--asked these authors to write a paper describing effective remedial education programs. They never wrote the paper. The problem was not the lack of dedicated faculty and staff working…

In 2007 the faculty at Miami Dade College joined the student body in signing a covenant "to build a foundation for the success of future students." The event capped a two-year effort on the part of the faculty to articulate the foundations of a 21st-century college education and codify them into 10 clear statements. However, creating a…

This article comments on an earlier article by professors Yates and Beaudrie (2009) who examined whether online assessment facilitates student cheating and found no evidence of such a greater prevalence of cheating. Professors Yates and Beaudrie are commended for their contribution to this increasingly important area of research. The analysis…

Frank Christ is the founder and co-director of the Winter Institutes for Learning Assistance Professionals and has been actively involved with learning assistance and learning centers for the past 40 years. In this interview, Christ talks about how learning centers today differ from those with which he was associated at the beginning of his…

In this article, the author writes from the perspective of a community college research practitioner, an institutional researcher whose daily work is intended primarily to affect policies, procedures and understanding of student learning and institutional effectiveness. The audience for this work is composed of faculty, administrators, staff,…

This collection of essays by community college administrators and faculty was developed to help administrators initiate better policies and procedures for evaluating students, full- and part-time faculty, administrators, programs, student services, external relations, and the institutions themselves. The volume contains: (1) "The Role of…

Discusses the performance evaluation problems specific to community college librarians, looking at student evaluations of librarians, peer evaluations, and self-evaluations. Compares two methods, one measuring job performance and professional development factors on a Likert scale and the other consisting of some variation of management by…

The program review process described in this report was developed at Anchorage Community College (ACC) after 3 years of experimentation and adjustment. Following a brief overview of the factors that instigated the effort, the report sets forth the assumptions and definitions underpinning the review process. Next, a series of suggestions are…

Reviews developments in faculty evaluation since 1968. Considers various evaluation models (e.g., Teacher Performance Test, comprehensive evaluation, and student evaluation). Concludes that rather than improving faculty performance, the emphasis on teacher evaluation has resulted in more faculty mistrust, lower self-esteem, less innovation and…

Describes 13 methodological options for assessing student learning and development, discussing advantages, disadvantages, techniques for reducing the disadvantages, and bottomline strategies as a guideline for selecting a suitable method. Indicates that it is crucial to use a multimethod approach to obtain maximum validity. (MAB)

This essay recounts the authors' experiences as community college faculty members in a learning community (LC) linking first-year composition with a class in life-career planning and development. The authors begin with a learning community story shared recently over drinks with a group of community college English teachers. They use the story to…