Student Outcomes Assessment of Air Command and Staff College: An Evaluative Study.

In the mid-1980s, the assessment movement began to spread throughout academia as colleges and universities created programs to address the issues of accountability and program improvement. A multitude of comprehensive institution-wide assessment programs emerged from the movement which brought about change on many campuses. The purpose of this study was to develop a comprehensive assessment program at an Air Force professional military education institution, Air Command and Staff College ACSC, based on the perceptions of recent Air Force officer graduates of the program. Graduates n395 were asked to rate the quality of program elements teaching methods and program activities and to disclose their perceived competence on outcome variables. Based on the data from a 90-item questionnaire titled, Student Perceptions of Program Effectiveness Questionnaire, the researcher analyzed student perceptions on three types of variables--inputs demographics and student expectations, environment teaching methods and program activities, and outcomes program goals. Information from returned questionnaires was collected and analyzed using descriptive means, standard deviations, and percentages, correlational cross-tabulations and Pearson rs, predictive multiple regression statistics, and qualitative analysis. The results of the correlational and predictive analyses show that ACSC graduates generally perceived their competencies on outcome variables and the quality of environmental variables as high. The most important results emerged from the predictive analysis. After controlling for the effects of inputs, which accounted from three percent of the variance in Command and Leadership to nine percent in Critical Thinking outcome Leadership to fifteen percent in Joint Campaign outcome variables.