UNC’s Faculty Council recently voted to endorse the assessment of two subjects through standardized testing. Some schools have looked toward the Collegiate Learning Assessment as a standardized performance gauge, but when considering tests that would fill this role, UNC faculty leaders should pay heed to the criticisms associated with this particular measure of student ability.
The Collegiate Learning Assessment is innovative in that it encourages students to demonstrate learned skills rather than former testing strategies that just force students to recall information.
Despite this push toward a more active testing strategy, there are many criticisms associated with the CLA.
Among these is the argument that there is a massive variation between the courses that universities offer when particular focuses of study are taken into account. The CLA does not account for differences between the particular specializations that schools focus on.
The CLA wouldn’t work at UNC because, for example, the critical thinking required of a biomedical engineering major entails an entirely different approach to that of a philosophy major. This instrument would have no way of accurately measuring these disparities.
In order to accurately measure student learning, standardized tests would have to take into account the disparities in the course of study that individual students follow. It is difficult to measure the average level of learning if students take different courses in different subjects with different professors.
Just because the CLA is the popular option doesn’t mean it’s the most appropriate or accurate measure of student learning at UNC.
