New Developments Make College Portrait More Accessible
By Christine M. Keller
In Fall 2008, the VSA surpassed the 300-participant mark with
public college and university members from 49 states and
Puerto Rico. Sixty percent of American Association of State
Colleges and Universities and National Association of State
University and Land-Grant Colleges member institutions have
voluntarily joined the initiative. The VSA institutions represent
a large proportion of U.S. public higher education— 3. 4 million
undergraduate students and more than 62 percent of the total
public undergraduate enrollment. Participation continues to
grow with each passing week.
In September 2008, a new query tool to better track student
enrollments and completions was released through a partnership with the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC). By using
Clearinghouse data, VSA participants can capture the educational attainments of students who transfer to other institutions
and produce a more accurate picture of student success. The
resulting success and progress rate is a valuable alternative
to the single-institution graduation rate. Importantly, the new
metric has the potential to shift the national conversation to a
more accurate representation of student progress as the query
is available to all NSC-participating institutions and not just
those within the VSA.
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In late September, a student-oriented website,
www.collegeportraits.org, was launched. The new website
provides easy access to some 225 College Portraits for prospective college students and their families. Students can use the
website as a tool to search for College Portraits by state, to visit
university websites, to request more information from institutions of their choice, and to share College Portrait links with
friends and family.
Additional significant developments are planned for 2009.
In late January, the College Portrait will move to a completely
web-based format. The new HTML version will supplement
and extend the current PDF document. The next generation of
the College Portrait will meet standards for accessibility and
usability in both its display and for the data entry and creation
process. As noted by one of the web developers working on
the project, ”By demonstrating that accessibility can be fully
integrated into advanced web development, the College Portrait
provides both a functionally accessible tool for students/users
and a model for administrators and developers for future accessible web-based services.” Also on the agenda is a Spanish-language version of the College Portrait. Both innovations
represent a significant step forward for the VSA project and
will make the College Portrait a valuable tool for an even
broader audience.
During the summer of 2009, the Fund for the Improvement of
Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) research findings on student
learning and development will be presented. The $2.4 million
grant that funded the research emerged in large part from
the work of the VSA task forces; three research projects are
currently underway. A construct validity study is examining
whether the three learning-
outcomes tests within the VSA can
be used interchangeably, whether
the tools are measuring similar
levels of achievement, and the
role of test format and admin-
istration. An effort to develop a
common framework or “meta
rubric” to measure learning out-
comes within e-portfolios across
institutions is underway. A third
project team is developing and
field testing an instrument to mea-
sure gains in civic engagement
and workforce preparation. The
results from these groundbreaking
studies will represent significant
contributions to the study of learn-
ing outcomes.
As clearly demonstrated by the
accomplishments within its inaugural year and the ambitious
plans for the future, the VSA’s
success is firmly based on the
enthusiastic and tremendous support from higher education
leaders within our public colleges and universities.
Christine M. Keller is director of research policy and analysis
at the National Association of State University and Land-Grant
Colleges and executive director of the VSA.
