Purpose: Assessment at Community College of Philadelphia is focused on continuous improvement and allows for the College to demonstrate institutional effectiveness to our external stakeholders and partners. Both teaching and non-teaching units participate in assessment activities that are aligned with the College’s Pillars of Success.

AES (Administrative, Educational, and Support) assessment is an assessment framework for all non-teaching units.

The AES evaluation cycle consists of unit plan development, and annual assessment reporting. Assessment plans are intended to assist the units in defining goals and outcomes to be measured, whereas the annual report allows units to reflect on performance and document improvements in support of the unit’s divisional goals and priorities as outlined in the division’s strategic plan and the College’s goals and priorities outlined in the College’s strategic plan.

 Alignment of the AES unit goals and support outcomes with the Division strategic plan and the College’s strategic plan is an important aspect of AES assessment

AES Assessment Planning

Since non-academic units do not undergo any curriculum development processes, the first thing that must be done is to define what will be assessed and how. This is done by creating or affirming a unit’s mission statement, goals, and support outcomes.

Mission Statement

A key aspect of the AES Assessment process is the development or affirmation of the AES unit ’s mission. Prior to the development of a unit plan, a mission review must occur to ensure that it is clear what the unit does, who the unit serves, and what results a unit expects.

Goals

Goals are broad statements that describe the overarching, long-range, ongoing areas of focus of an AES unit. These goals are usually not measurable and will be further developed and operationalized as outcomes, that when measured appropriately, will provide evidence of how well you are accomplishing your goals. Goals are primarily used for general planning and are used as a starting point for the development and refinement of outcomes.

Support Outcomes

There can be no assessment without defined support outcomes. AES objectives, or support outcomes, should respond to the following questions:

• How does the unit work toward this goal?
• What service is being provided?
• What value is being added to the service or program?

Objectives/Support Outcomes are:

• Unique to the AES unit
• Derived from the goals
• Focused on the delivery of services, processes, activities, or functions to students, faculty or staff
• Specific enough to provide for assessment of progress over several years
• Measurable using qualitative or quantitative measures
• Able to communicate value and evaluation captures

Data collection

Measures

• Support outcome assessment methods (measures) can utilize either qualitative or quantitative methods. They can include evaluations and activities already in use, as well as others the unit would like to establish. They should be tied directly to a specific objective/support outcome, to be clear about what assessments are to be used to measure each outcome. When describing Measures in the AES plan or report, you should include enough detail about the source of your information so that another person in your unit could locate that information if you were unavailable.
• When writing measures, focus on tools your unit is already using rather than creating new ones.
• If your measures include developing a new survey instrument, be sure that you follow College Survey Policy

Data Analysis

Findings/Results

• The actual results of assessment activities. While you may attach or reference other documents, a brief summary will suffice for the purposes of the AES assessment report. Findings should align directly with measures and benchmarks in terms of data sources, units, and level of detail analyzed.
• Each year, when you use the measures defined in the previous section, be sure to retain the results of those measures in your files.
• For each AES Report, you will be reporting on the immediately previous academic year, which we refer to as the previous “assessment cycle,” e.g., for the report due in September 2024, you will be reporting on the 2023-2024 academic year.

Discussion/Analysis

Describe the context for the findings and clearly articulate what these results mean to you. Summarize the discussions that have occurred within the unit, or with other related units, as a result of analyzing the results. It may be helpful to reference meeting minutes or notes here, or include additional anecdotal or qualitative data related to the findings.

Data Driving

Action Plans/Next Steps

Briefly summarize what action plans will be put into place next year to address the findings and discussions. If benchmarks have been met, describe what the unit will continue or will focus on to reproduce or improve results. If benchmarks have been partially met or have not been met, describe what will need to change (either internally, externally, or both) in order for benchmarks to be met in the following year. This is also an appropriate place to discuss planned changes to the assessment plan itself, which may yield more accurate or actionable data.

Budget/Resource Implications

Address any implications, positive or negative, that findings and/or action plans may have for the coming year’s budget. This is a good place to reference any budget requests that have been submitted or are planned; AES reports with data may be included with budget requests to inform the justification narrative.

Previous Year Follow-up

Address the current results or status of action plans that were developed for the previous cycle’s AES plan (FY 2020) and implemented during this most recent cycle. Were the plans feasible and reasonable to implement?  Did they have the intended impact? If so, will they continue being enacted, and does the unit have a plan to assess them in an ongoing way? If not, what will be changed, added, or dropped? How have these actions and results impacted other unit activities or projects? How have they impacted unit resources or budget?