Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA)
The Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) offers an authentic approach to the improvement of teaching and learning in higher education through a continuous improvement model, and recognizes faculty as central actors in educational improvement efforts. The CLA assists faculty, department chairs, school administrators and others interested in programmatic change to improve teaching and learning, particularly with respect to strengthening higher order skills. Click here to go to CLA website.
- The CLA includes Performance and Analytic Writing Tasks meant to measure analytic reasoning and evaluation, writing effectiveness, writing mechanics, and problem solving.
- “Performance Tasks ask students to complete a ‘real life’ activity, such as preparing a memo or policy recommendation.”
- “The Analytic Writing Task contains two types of essay prompts: a Make-an Argument section in which students are asked to take a position and craft a persuasive argument and a Critique-an-Argument section which requires students to identify and describe logical flaws in a given argument.”
- The CLA was completed by 59 freshmen and 92 seniors in 2007/2008, 89 seniors in 2008/2009, 92 freshmen and 100 seniors in 2009/2010, and 70 freshmen and 80 seniors in 2011/2012.
The value-added scores measure how the difference in freshman and senior scores for an institution compare to other participating institutions. The value-added scores reported in the table below for TTU also show whether this value is “Below” (between -1.00 and -2.00 standard deviations), “Near” (between -1.00 and +1.00), or “Above” (between +1.00 and +2.00) expected. Note that there is no value-added score for 2008/2009 because TTU freshman did not participate in the fall of 2008.
The below table shows how the TTU samples compare to the national samples from each year in performance task scores and analytic writing task scores.
