Agility and Assessment in the Age of COVID‐19: How Fast Can a Community College Dance?

• Published in: Assessment Update 2020-11, Vol.32 (6), p.8-9
• Main Author: Kolb, Marcus
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1041-6099; 1536-0725
• DOI: 10.1002/au.30235

Ivy Tech, Indiana's only community college, serving more than 150,000 students annually across 18 campuses and hundreds of educational sites, faced the same challenges as most higher education institutions in the spring of 2020—finish a semester and help students complete their credentials while rapidly evolving into something new, all while trying to plan for the unknown in the coming summer and fall semesters. Mapping of curricula—identifying program‐level learning outcomes, mapping those outcomes to courses, and delineating assessments in those courses, aligned to the program outcomes—was already nearly complete, and the next body of work—collecting that assessment data across the system—was under development. The centers, located on each of the 18 campuses, are multipurpose offices where students go to participate in assessment for classes, community members go to take certification or licensing exams, and applicants go to take placement instruments designed to help determine where they should begin their Ivy Tech studies. The wait to get folks together to work—Ivy Tech spans the entire state of Indiana, so colleagues at the Fort Wayne and Evansville campuses are a time zone and 300 miles apart—could often slow work.