Academic Proficiency

In order to evaluate the validity of outcomes assessment at two-year colleges, the American College Testing (ACT) Program developed "Project Cooperation. " Institutions participating in the project administered tests and surveys to measure changes in students ' cognitive abilities over time and record student feedback, and reported the data along with curricula and student transcript information to ACT. In addition, ACT developed an achievement index and a planning/test content form to help institutions develop the best research design and match course objectives with test objectives. To measure cognitive outcomes, 78 colleges applied the Collegiate Assessment of Academic Proficiency (CAAP) test to freshmen in 1989 and 1990 and again to the same students in 1992. To gather student feedback, 72 participating institutions administered the College Outcomes Survey (COS) in spring 1992. The COS include