To make an assessment – and development – of transversal skills effective in the online education of the post-Corona new normal, we will need to be better at articulating the learning outcomes in general academic and personal competences. But the underlying challenge is that general academic competence (like critical thinking or information analysis) and personal competences (like working with others and effective communication to different target groups) still rely on the implicit knowledge and convictions of the assessing teachers. One complication is that assessment of how students develop these skills often needs to be ongoing (formative assessment) rather than through end-of-term exams. If the digital assessment of subject-related knowledge and skills already has its particular challenges (proctoring, data protection, students with special needs), digital assessments of “more vague” general academic or (inter)personal competences are even more difficult. How so?Ĭorona has forced all of our universities to move education online – and to move to the assessment of student learning through digital means. The Corona pandemic underlines the need to improve our toolkit and language to integrate transversal competences into our curricula. When we try to ‘translate’ this to a European setting – without Community Colleges – one might suspect that STEM courses outside the degree programme and focused on core STEM skills may add to the success of a diverse student population. The paper contains indications that enrolment in supplementary classes at a Community College may particularly benefit low-socioeconomic and female students in the US. Using student data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, they find in their working paper “ Does Taking Does Taking a Few Courses at a Community College Improve the Baccalaureate, STEM, and Labor Market Outcomes of Four-Year College Students?” that students who took Community College courses on the side obtained more credits (in STEM fields), graduated with better grades and had better employment outcomes than students who did not take such supplementary courses.
What is the impact on the likelihood of obtaining a college degree and on labour market outcomes? Census data show that about 20% of students at 4-year Colleges do this and 8 % obtain credit. Two scholars from the Community College Research Center at Columbia University analysed what it does to students at 4-year Colleges if they take supplementary courses at a Community College.
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