Exploring the Relationship between the Collegiate Learning Assessment, Student Learning Activities, and Study Behaviors: Implications for Colleges and Universities

Globally, institutions of higher learning have attempted to utilize various methods to assess student learning outcomes and simultaneously determine what factors influence targeted performance measures. The National Survey of Student Engagement is a popular instrument many colleges and universities employ to gain an understanding of what student behaviors are linked to such desired outcomes as graduation and persistence. Internationally, other universities are exploring the concept of student engagement as a means to assess college environments. Recently, calls from stakeholders have prompted institutions to use assessments to demonstrate so-called twenty-first century skills such as critical thinking; the Collegiate Learning Assessment is one such tool. This study reports preliminary efforts to link the NSSE engagement indicators to CLA performance at a medium-sized Historically Black College or University. Results indicate that the NSSE indicators are (1) poor predictors of student GPA, (2) of the ten indicators of the NSSE, only one was found to be a significant predictor of CLA performance, and (3) of the items comprising this indicator, only half are associated with CLA outcomes.

Using the Collegiate Learning Assessment to Address the College-to-Career Space

Issues in higher education, such as the rising cost of education, career readiness, and increases in the achievement gap have led to a movement toward accountability in higher education. This chapter addresses the issues related to career readiness by highlighting an assessment tool, the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), through two case studies. The first examines the college-to-career space by comparing different alternatives for predicting college success as measured by college GPA. The second addresses an identified market failure of highly qualified college graduates being overlooked for employment due to a matching problem. The chapter concludes with a proposal for a solution to this problem, namely a matching system.

Assessing learning gains of university students in Hong Kong adopting the Collegiate Learning Assessment Plus (CLA+)

The present study attempted to examine students’ learning gains in critical thinking, problem solving, and effective communication after 1-year university study under a new 4-year undergraduate curriculum based on students’ performance on the Collegiate Learning Assessment Plus (CLA+). One hundred and fifty freshmen and 150 sophomores at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) completed the CLA+ in 2013–2014 academic year. Results showed that sophomores had better performance in CLA+ than freshmen on problem solving, effective communication, and critical thinking. Compared with freshmen, fewer sophomores were classified as ‘Below Basic’ at mastering the related skills. The findings support the effectiveness of the new 4-year undergraduate curriculum, particularly the General University Requirements, in promoting students’ development in desired graduate attributes. However, students’ language barrier might affect their CLA+ scores which led to the small effect size in the differences between freshmen and sophomores.

Higher Education Outcomes at the National Level on the Example of the Project “Collegiate Learning Assessment”

We discuss the interpretation of the concept of “learning outcomes”. Theoretical analysis widely represents the interpretations of the learning outcomes of a high school student: academic skills: understanding, application of knowledge to solve problems, synthesis, analysis and evaluation; basic skills and basic knowledge, and skills of a higher order and advanced knowledge; skills of a higher order represented as a system of critical thinking, analytic reasoning, problem solving and written communication; wide abilities interpreted as verbal, quantitative and spatial thinking, understanding, problem solving and decision making. We conclude that each considered approach distinguishes meta-subjective skills, i.e. skills to interact with the quality of information regardless of the context. The ability to measure the meta-skills is discussed on an example of the “Collegiate learning assessment”, realized in the United States.

A Serious Flaw in the Collegiate Learning Assessment [CLA] Test

The Collegiate Learning Assessment Test (CLA) has become popular and highly recommended, praised for its reliability and validity. I argue that while the CLA may be a commendable test for measuring critical-thinking, problem-solving, and logical-reasoning skills, those who are scoring students’ answers to the test’s questions are rendering the CLA invalid.