Embed Doc
Copy Link
Readcast
Collections

CommentGo Back

Download

[ ]

learning

collegiate

assessment

C IN CONTEXT

A MESSAGEFROM THEPRESIDENT

A liberal arts school I will call here “Sunny Glen College” was one o thefrst participants in the CLA.

With its campuswide academic ethos that provides studentswith opportunities and expectations to pursue independent study and to engage in individualresearch, and with both eforts guided by extensive aculty advising, Sunny Glen seemed like an idealcandidate or the CLA. Additionally, its much-heralded campus philosophy is to create a culture thatpromotes the kinds o skill development measured by the CLA (critical thinking, analytic reasoning,problem solving, and written communication).Ater participating in the CLA, campus administrators were perplexed to nd that their studentsperormed at levels ar lower than expected when compared to other liberal arts colleges. The initialreaction o the Sunny Glen College administrators was a bit deensive: they wanted to learn moreabout the CLA and to ensure the validity and reliability o our measures. However, ater they reviewedthe additional inormation we provided and ollowing numerous discussions we held with the staf,the administration concluded that the CLA measures were solid, and that they instead would need toconsider the meaning o the results.Campus administrators rst shared the results with the aculty and engaged them in a conversationto identiy causal mechanisms that might explain the disparity between their expectations and the

actual assessment results. Ater some campus-wide introspection and some additional data collec-tion they completed on their own, the Sunny Glen College community concluded that its educa-tional philosophy was appropriate and one they remained committed to, but that in practice therewas a disconnect between the philosophy and actual, day-to-day campus lie. They ound thatstudents were doing inadequate levels o serious independent work and that there was limitedaculty advising. Even though students would report that they were having a positive experience atthe institution, this had more to do with the act that they were enjoying themselves and less aboutgetting a good education. By participating in the CLA, which served as a systematic assessment o student perormance with measures that could be benchmarked against other schools, the campusreceived a “reality check” on the degree to which it was meeting its institutional goals. The administration has already moved towards making more explicit its expectations and standardsor members o the campus community (students, aculty, and administrators), encouraged moreassessment and eedback to students, and acilitated the call or greater student efort. I am happy toreport that Sunny Glen College plans to use the CLA measures again to chart the ecacy o thesereorm eforts. The experience at Sunny Glen—and at other colleges and universities that have joined the growingnumber o CLA institutions—has been tremendously gratiying. Our motive or developing the CLAwas to support colleges and universities in their eforts to improve undergraduate education throughthe use o direct measures o student learning outcomes, and this is exactly what is happening.But while I’m tremendously proud o the work o the staf here in the CLA headquarters in New York,I’m equally in awe o the campus communities around the country like the one at Sunny GlenCollege that are accomplishing the thoughtul, analytical work needed to move orward, using theCLA data to inorm and improve their own local programs, and asking the hard questions.Roger Benjamin, Ph.D.PresidentCouncil or Aid to Education