Following Up on ACES Reports

After students respond to the final page of questions, they’ll receive a color-coded report that shows their percentile rank on each scale.

• Scales with green bars indicate a high skill level, consistent with the highest 25% of the national sample.
• Scales with yellow bars indicate a moderate skill level, consistent with the middle 50% of the national sample.
• Scales with red bars indicate a low skill level, consistent with the lowest 25% of the national sample.

For each scale and for each skill range (high, moderate, low), students receive feedback that defines the scale, justifies its importance, recommends next steps, and suggests relevant campus resources. As noted previously, students are shown only feedback that matches their result for each scale, but instructors can access feedback for high, moderate, and low percentile rankings on each scale using the View Feedback button on the Instructor Home page.

Students can use the reports independently. For more impact, consider the following additional activities:

• Because quantitative measures can be intimidating for students, consider asking students to evaluate themselves on each scale before working carefully with the ACES report. They can compare their predictions with their ACES report and reflect on the similarities and differences.
• Require students to use the feedback on their highest three scales and lowest three scales to make an action plan for improving these six skills during the next month. For their continued academic success and long-term career development, students need to know how to enhance the areas in which they are already highly skilled, so spend time helping students understand why and how to build on their strengths. Ask students to use next steps and campus resource suggestions from the ACES report as well as add their own ideas. Their action plans should include due dates for when they will implement each activity.
• Provide students with paragraph starters so that they can reflect on their scores.
  • I was pleasantly surprised that . . . .
  • I was reassured by . . . .
  • I was confused by . . . .
  • I was inspired by . . . .
• Help students think about related skills, presented in the following four clusters or in other combinations if you prefer. In a paragraph, ask students to rate themselves as high, moderate, or low on the cluster, and then use their percentile ranks, feedback, and reactions to the relevant scales to justify their self-evaluation and explain how they plan to improve.
  • Academic Habits (Critical Thinking and Goal Setting; Learning Preferences; Organization and Time Management)
  • Study Skills (Reading; Note Taking; Memory and Studying; Test Taking; Information Literacy and Communication)
  • Self-Control (Motivation, Decision Making, and Personal Responsibility; Personal and Financial Health; Academic and Career Planning)
  • Community (Connecting with Others)

Students might use their reports for small-group discussion in the following ways.

• Ask students to tell one thing they already knew about themselves or their skills, one thing they learned, and one thing they look forward to learning.
• Similar to the icebreaker “Two Truths and a Lie,” ask students to share “Two Strengths and a Weakness.” For each strength, have students describe something they do that helps them be successful on that scale. For the weakness, have students describe something they plan to try based on the suggestions of their peers or on the ACES report.
• Ask groups to personalize the campus resources for your institution. Assign each group a different scale and help them identify ways of exploring all the services your campus offers.
• After the class has covered a skill in more depth, invite groups to rewrite the feedback for the scale in the report. Assign high, moderate, and low skill ranges to different groups. For a challenge, ask the groups to write statements for the skill that could be used in the revised version of the ACES instrument. We’d love to hear from you! Contact us with the best feedback and statement examples.
• Ask students to use their individual reports or the Class Report (available only to instructors) to write a proposal to you or a campus administrator with a suggestion about how to address a particular skill.

Most important, the individual reports can also guide your one-on-one conversations with students. Use their reports as a reason to bring students into your office early in the term and help them shape their plan of action.

Particularly if some students score in the lowest percentile rank on most or all of the ACES scales, be sure to connect with them personally and ask for their reaction to the instrument. Perhaps these students didn’t take ACES seriously. But if students did take ACES seriously and still scored low, let them know that that’s okay. Reassure them and offer hope. You might say, “The first term of school is the best time to assess your habits, behaviors, and skills to find out what you need to change. This course will help you think more about each of these areas, establish goals, and grow. I’m confident that by the end of the term you will feel much more confident in these areas. In fact, let’s check back in. . . .”

Encourage students to share their reports with advisers, tutors, or other instructors who may be able to help them. The online reports in LaunchPad are visible only to students and to you; use the export and print features to share with others.

The ACES Class Report for instructors (see Class Report) shows how your class’s distribution of skill ranges (high, moderate, low) compares to the national norm.

For your class, use the Class Report to help you:

• Determine how to prioritize the topics you teach
• Highlight relevant programs or events outside of class to provide additional support for addressing students’ weaknesses
• Identify strong students who might be willing to report on the ways they practice a skill
• Organize groups with mixed skill levels or similar skill levels

For your program, use the Class Reports to help you:

• Celebrate students’ strengths by including highlights from the reports in messages and posters
• Revise the ways you describe students’ strengths and weaknesses to faculty, staff, and administrators
• Revise the ways you describe students’ strengths and weaknesses to the students themselves
• Target students’ weaknesses with additional programming or services
• Identify strong students who may be willing to serve as peer leaders
• Identify struggling students who may have scored in the lowest quartile on many scales
• Report students’ needs in order to solicit the support needed for additional programs, staff, or resources

This version of ACES includes a Post-Test. The Post-Test will be the same as the initial inventory, but with 12 additional questions. The 12 additional questions are available as a separate assignment in which students rate their change in confidence since the beginning of the term in each of the 12 areas measured by ACES.

For the Post-Test, please keep in mind that student results can sometimes be *lower* at the end of the term than they were at the start. This is by no means a sign of failure. Students usually become *more* self-aware over the term in a college success class, so many students' results will be less positive than they were at the start of the course because they've developed a more realistic view of their own strengths and challenges. ACES is designed to give students a check-in point, a place to start their work at the beginning or the end of the course. For an alternative end of term activity, consider assigning the End-of-Term ACES Self-Assessment of Change.

ACES includes a student self-assessment of change. Students revisit where they were at the beginning of the term, and assess how they've changed over the course of the term.

To use the results of this self-assessment with the class, you can discuss the results together or in small groups, or create a writing assignment that asks students to reflect on the self-assessment experience and how far they've come over the course of the term.