ACCELERATE Principles in Action: A Community College Case Study

The ACCELERATE Principles for Best Practice offer a framework to guide the practices used by all engaged in assessment work (SamugaGyaanam+Bheda et al. , 2025). This case study is a closer look into how the principles manifest in a community college setting. An analysis of existing strategies that reflect the principles was conducted to help illustrate the applicability of the principles and indicate when, where, and how the principles appear across the College’s assessment work. What started as a simple question of “How do we know? ”, in the early years, has led to a robust assessment system with custom rubrics, assessment management software, tools that align curriculum across multiple outcomes, professional development for new faculty, and hundreds of learning improvement stories. Using the lens of the ACCELERATE principles to analyze practices was a successful exercise to evaluate strengths of practices as well as opportunities for improvement.