Assessment: Understanding Student Learning at Colorado Mountain College

Student learning is more than just grades. It is a deeper dive into evaluating what our students are able to master in terms of the cognitive (knowing), psychomotor (doing), and affective (expressing) domains throughout all of our academic courses and co-curricular student experiences. This requires an intentional and comprehensive methodology to assess how our students perform against the various outcomes that we wish them to achieve.

This methodology in an academic environment is generally referred to as “Assessment”, and is an institution-wide initiative that encompasses all activities, academic and co-curricular, that involve our students.

Assessment is the right thing to do for our students. We need to understand how our students learn, and be able to modify our teaching methods and our curriculum to ensure that they receive the best instruction we can offer to meet their individual educational goals.

We define our educational quality by how well our students learn, and understand that the public’s expectation for higher education is that we are accountable to ensure that students learn what they need to know to attain personal success and fulfill their public responsibilities in a global and diverse society.

Assessment activities encourage faculty collaboration and sharing of experiences and assessment techniques across disciplines, provide a tangible benchmark of student learning for launching conversations regarding student success, and furnish the motivation to embrace specific institutional changes.

Assessment also allows focusing of scarce resources (both time and funding) toward those initiatives that have the potential for significant improvements in student learning, and to enhance the efficiency of the institution with respect to student success.

Assessment allows institutions like us to tell our story. It provides us a way to validate that what we are doing is important to students, the community, and the state at large; it allows us to show that we are making a difference in students’ lives.

Our accrediting body, the Higher Learning Commission, agrees with this philosophy, stating that “Organizations assess student learning in meaningful, useful, and workable ways to evaluate how they are achieving their commitments, and to act on the results in ways that advance student learning and improve educational quality. Effective assessment of student learning is a matter of commitment, not a matter of compliance.” CMC takes this considerable responsibility seriously.

Embedding assessment in our pedagogy and curriculum ensures we continually improve student learning. Assessment as a practice allows us to continually improve and adapt assessment methods to be more inclusive and representative of student knowledge regardless of students’ experiences, knowledge, or skills. Through assessment, we celebrate our students as unique learners and share successes!

Our team collaborates with CMC's Student Learning Assessment Committee (SLAC) each semester. SLAC's charter, with college-wide faculty representation, is to guide, advise, and coordinate the use of effective course, program, and institutional assessment practices to improve teaching pedagogy, enhance student learning, and maximize student success.

Using CMC’s 4-question Assessment Reporting Praxis, our goal is that assessment is embedded and meaningful for improvement of student learning and that we can share teaching strategies that best support our students and provide equity-minded learning spaces.

Download the Assessment Program Goals for Colorado Mountain College,

Most programs have a mix of in-person and remote learning, preparing you for life that truly is lived in both physically and digitally.

Colorado Mountain College prepares students for the world where they will work, play, live, and lead. We know that graduates have diverse career paths today, so we offer in-person, online, and remote learning options.

Beyond the classroom, we offer chances for student internships, study abroad, and engage in research projects. Today's world requires flexibility, and CMC programs equip our students to meet those demands.

For this reason and as a Dual Mission, Hispanic Serving Institution, we created the Institutional Student Learning Outcomes (ISLOs). To develop these outcomes, A diverse team of faculty and staff worked together in the 2022-23 Academic Year. They gathered input from employers, experts, students, faculty, alums, and staff to create three branches of the ISLOs.

• Knowledge - Students learn the skills needed for personal, creative, and professional endeavors.
• Involvement - Students will support their communities' social, economic, and environmental well-being.
• Application - Students will solve complex problems through cooperation and creativity.

When students graduate from CMC, we expect them to have mastered Knowledge, Involvement, and Application. The education they receive here equips them with the skills, confidence, and abilities to thrive out there.

Learn more about CMC Institutional Student Learning Outcomes.

A General Education program benefits students by encouraging them to acquire the intellectual tools, knowledge, and creative capabilities necessary to be able to study the world as it is, as it has been understood, and as it might become. General Education prepares students for fulfilled lives as educated persons and effective contributors to a democratic society.

To develop breadth of knowledge, general education courses familiarize students with methods of inquiry across various academic disciplines, as well as prepare students for employment and fulfilling lives as educated persons and effective contributors to a democratic society. Effective general education helps students act ethically and responsibly and develop habits of critical thinking, intellectual sophistication, and an orientation to lifelong learning and investigation.

CMC Bachelor’s, Associate of Arts (AA), Associate of Science Degrees (AS):

CMC Associate of Applied Science (AAS) Degrees: