Benchmarks of Effective Educational Practice
The CCSSE benchmarks are groups of
conceptually related survey items that address key
areas of student engagement. The five benchmarks
denote areas that educational research has shown to
be important to students’ college experiences and
educational outcomes. Therefore, they provide
colleges with a useful starting point for looking at
institutional results and allow colleges to gauge and
monitor their performance in areas that are central
to their work. In addition, participating colleges
have the opportunity to make appropriate and
useful comparisons between their performance and
that of groups of other colleges.
Performing as well as the national average or a
peer-group average may be a reasonable initial
aspiration, but it is important to recognize that these
averages are sometimes unacceptably low. Aspiring to
match and then exceed high-performance targets is the
stronger strategy.
Community colleges can differ dramatically on such
factors as size, location, resources, enrollment
patterns, and student characteristics. It is important to
take these differences into account when interpreting
benchmark scores—especially when making
institutional comparisons. The Center for
Community College Student Engagement has
adopted the policy “Responsible Uses of CCSSE and
SENSE Data,” available at www.cccse.org.
CCSSE uses a three-year cohort of participating
colleges in all core survey analyses. The current cohort
is referred to as the 2016 CCSSE Cohort (2014-2016)
throughout all reports.
CCSSE Benchmarks
★ Active and Collaborative Learning
Students learn more when they are actively involved in their
education and have opportunities to think about and apply
what they are learning in different settings. Through
collaborating with others to solve problems or master
challenging content, students develop valuable skills that
prepare them to deal with real-life situations and problems.
★
Student Effort
Students’ own behaviors contribute significantly to their
learning and the likelihood that they will successfully attain
their educational goals.
★
Academic Challenge
Challenging intellectual and creative work is central to
student learning and collegiate quality. These survey items
address the nature and amount of assigned academic work,
the complexity of cognitive tasks presented to students, and
the rigor of examinations used to evaluate student
performance.
★
Student-Faculty Interaction
In general, the more contact students have with their
teachers, the more likely they are to learn effectively and to
persist toward achievement of their educational goals.
Through such interactions, faculty members become role
models, mentors, and guides for continuous, lifelong
learning.
★
Support for Learners
Students perform better and are more satisfied at colleges
that provide important support services, cultivate positive
relationships among groups on campus, and demonstrate
commitment to their success.
For further information about CCSSE benchmarks, please visit
www.cccse.org.
Figure 2
*Top-Performing colleges are those that scored in the top 10 percent of the cohort by benchmark.
SOWELA Technical Community College 2016 CCSSE Cohort 2016 Top-Performing Colleges*
42.7
50.0
59.6
49.2
50.0
57.9
46.0
50.0
56.9
50.2 50.0
59.0
55.7
50.0
59.8
Benchmark Scores
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
Active and Collaborative
Learning
Student Effort Academic Challenge Student-Faculty
Interaction
Support for
Learners
Notes: Benchmark scores are standardized to have a mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 25 across all respondents. For further
information about how benchmarks are computed, please visit www.cccse.org.
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