Examining Student Engagement Of African American Community College Students: Focusing On The Ccsse Benchmarks

Research in the area of student engagement has shown that the more engaged minority students are with faculty and staff, with other students, and with the subject matter they study, the more likely they are to learn and persist toward achieving their academic goals. Secondary data from the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) were used to measure the student engagement benchmarks from the perspective of African American community college students. The National 2006 CCSSE Cohort dataset includes 249,548 students who submitted functional surveys from 447 participating member colleges in 46 states. The current research used a sample of 24,000 randomly selected African American community college students who completed the CCSSE in the spring of 2004, 2005 or 2006. The study consisted of students who identified themselves as African American. The five institutional benchmarks: (a) Active and Collaborative Learning, (b) Student Effort, (c) Academic Challenge, (d) Student-Faculty Interaction, and (e) Support for Learners which represented the dependent variables. The nine independent variables in the study were: (a) urbanicity of the institution, (b) size of the institution, (c) age group, (d) gender, (e) first-generation, (f) number of hours worked per week, (g) enrollment status, (h) developmental education status, and (i) grade point average. Significant differences were found in how African American students rated their institutions' performance on the CCSSE benchmarks for the independent variables: (a) Age Group on the dependent variables Student Effort and Academic Challenge, (b) First-Generation Status on the dependent variable Student-Faculty Interaction, (c) Developmental Education Status on the dependent variables Active and Collaborative Learning, Student Effort, and Support for Learners Benchmarks, and (d) Grade Point Average on the dependent variables Active and Collaborative Learning, Student Effort, Academic Challenge, Student-Faculty Interaction, and Support for Learners Benchmarks. In addition, non-significant differences (p > .05) were found in the independent variables: (a) urbanicity of the institution for the dependent variables Active and Collaborative Learning, Student Effort, Academic Challenge, Student-Faculty Interaction, and Support for Learners Benchmarks, (b) size of the institution for the dependent variables Active and Collaborative Learning, Student Effort, Academic Challenge, Student-Faculty Interaction, and Support for Learners Benchmarks, (c) gender for the dependent variables Active and Collaborative Learning, Student Effort, Academic Challenge, Student-Faculty Interaction, and Support for Learners (d) age group for the dependent variables Active and Collaborative Learning, Student-Faculty Interaction, and Support for Learners, (e) first-generation status for the dependent variables Active and Collaborative Learning, Student Effort, Academic Challenge, and Support for Learners, (f) number of hours worked per week for the dependent variables Active and Collaborative Learning, Student Effort, Academic Challenge, Student-Faculty Interaction, and Support for Learners, (g) enrollment status for the dependent Variables: Active and Collaborative Learning, Student Effort, Academic Challenge, Student-Faculty Interaction, and Support for Learners, and (i) developmental education status for the dependent variables Academic Challenge and Student-Faculty Interaction Benchmarks. The assessment of student engagement continues to have the potential to reveal useful information about how institutions could enhance persistence in achieve positive student outcomes.