Bill Law, president of St. Petersburg College and member of CCCSE's National Advisory Board, presenting on CCSSE 2011 Findings

Center Releases National Report, a First Look at Promising Practices in Community Colleges

A Matter of Degrees: Promising Practices for Community College Student Success is the first in a series of reports by the Center for Community College Student Engagement exploring 13 promising practices for strengthening community college student engagement and success. A Matter of Degrees presents key findings from a multi-year Center initiative, Identifying and Promoting High-Impact Educational Practices in Community Colleges, and brings together survey responses from entering students, experienced students, faculty, and institutions. Data sources include results from recent Survey of Entering Student Engagement (SENSE) and Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) administrations, the SENSE and CCSSE 2011 special-focus items on promising practices, and the Community College Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (CCFSSE) three-year cohort, plus preliminary findings from the newly launched Community College Institutional Survey (CCIS).

CCSSE 2012 Survey Administration

The 2012 Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) administration marks the second round of a large-scale initiative focused on identifying and promoting high-impact educational practices in community colleges. In addition to the regular CCSSE survey instrument, CCSSE 2012 colleges will automatically receive—free of charge—a survey item module composed of key questions pertaining to potential high-impact practices in community colleges. (Though we strongly encourage participation in the high-impact practices initiative, a college still may elect to administer its own additional survey items.) Please see the fact sheet (PDF) for more information about this project.

A parallel special-focus item set has been incorporated in CCFSSE (the companion faculty survey). These items explore the extent of faculty members’ involvement in planning, designing, and implementing the identified promising practices in their teaching and other work with students.

Online registration for the 2012 CCSSE and CCFSSE administrations is now closed. The deadline to register for the 2012 CCSSE administration was November 1, 2011.

If your college is interested in participating in CCSSE and CCFSSE, please contact the Center at 512-471-6807 or info@cccse.org.

Join the Community College Completion Commitment!

The Center for Community College Student Engagement invites and encourages all colleges to join CCCSE, five other national organizations, and numerous higher education institutions, in the commitment to increase student completion rates by 50 percent over the next decade. Each college that signs this statement will be contributing to a rapidly growing community working to advance the completion agenda.

Find out more about who’s involved and view other resources.

An Improvement Strategy for Community Colleges

The Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) provides a much-needed tool for assessing quality in community college education. CCSSE results help colleges focus on good educational practice — defined as practice that promotes high levels of student learning and retention — and identify areas in which community colleges can improve their programs and services for students. All our work is grounded in research about what works in strengthening student learning and persistence.

Each year, CCSSE releases the results of its survey, which is administered directly to community college students at CCSSE member colleges during randomly selected classes. The survey asks questions about institutional practices and student behaviors that are highly correlated with student learning and retention. Results are public, and they are presented for the full CCSSE population, various subgroups within the full population, and individual colleges.*Results include national benchmarks and institutional benchmark scores for five key areas of engagement.

CCSSE is committed to presenting data without flinching. Accurate information, whether positive or negative, can help improve educational practice and performance. We also support community college efforts to use survey data for continuous improvement, and we encourage policymakers to create conditions that support and reward institutional work to improve student learning.

^{*CCSSE opposes using its data to rank colleges. Each community college’s performance should be considered in terms of its mission, institutional focus, and student characteristics. Because of differences in these areas — and variations in college resources — comparing survey results between individual institutions serves little constructive purpose and likely will be misleading. For more information, see our policy statement on responsible uses of CCSSE data.}