CCSSE

(Community College Survey of Student Engagement)

Overview - 2008

The Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) provides information about the effective educational practice in community colleges and assists institutions in using that information to promote improvements in student learning and persistence.  CCSSE’s goal is to provide member colleges with results that can be used to inform decision making and target institutional improvements.  Student engagement, or the amount of time and energy that students invest in meaningful educational practices, is the underlying foundation for CCSSE’s work.  CCSSE’s survey instrument, the Community College Student Report (CCSR), is designed to capture student engagement as a measure of institutional quality.

Below are some important dates in the survey process:

• January 22, 2008 – Course Master Data File was sent to CCSSE
• February 2008 – Survey Packets were distributed to Instructors
• March 14, 2008 – Surveys Due back to Institutional Research Coordinator
• August 2008 – Survey Results were sent to STC

Credit classes were chosen randomly from the Course Master Data File by time of day and location to participate in the surveys.  Out of these classes, there were 228 STC students that completed the survey.  The paper surveys completion time ranged from 35 to 50 minutes to complete.

CCSSE has identified five benchmarks of effective educational practice in community colleges: active and collaborative learning; student effort; academic challenge; student-faculty interaction; and support for learners.  These benchmarks are tools that can be used to compare college performance across benchmarks, to similarly sized institutions, and to the full CCSSE population of community colleges.

Institutional data is compared to the 2008 CCSSE Cohort, which is three years of participating colleges (2006-2008) and is comprised of 585 institutions across 48 states.  The total number of students in this cohort is approximately 343,000.

Overall, there were 45 questions where STC scored notably above the mean of our comparison group and only 6 scored below.  After a more thorough look, 3 out of those 6 which scored below the mean were actually positive for the institution, since the lower the score the better.  (see report questions 4e, 4u, and 14e) J

Out of many reports compiled by CCSSE, the most informative is the Mean Summary Report: Enrollment Status Breakout.  This report lists each question with the corresponding mean by part-time/fulltime status compared to other small colleges and to the 2008 CCSSE Cohort.

For additional information, their website is:  http://www.ccsse.org/