California State University, Los Angeles College Portrait

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Students
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Admissions
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College Cost Estimator
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Classes and Campus Life
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Student Experiences
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Majors, Graduation and Next Steps
See which majors are most popular at CSULA and what recent graduates plan to do after earning their bachelor's degree.
Student Success & Progress
Discover how many students who start at CSULA finish their bachelor's degree and how long it takes.
Student Learning Outcomes
Figure out what learning gains to expect in critical thinking, writing, and other important subjects at CSULA.
Public Good

Student Learning at California State University, Los Angeles

All colleges and universities use multiple approaches to measure student learning. Many of these are specific to particular disciplines, many are coordinated with accrediting agencies, and many are based on outcomes after students have graduated.

Information on individual, course, program and institutional level assessments can be located on the CSULA Assessment web page at www.calstatela.edu/academic/aa/assessment/. This page also contains the campus assessment policy, the campus syllabus policy, SLOs by college and program, a list of assessment coordinators, assessment reports, and assessment tools and resources.

Learning Assessment Examples

Pilot Project to Measure Core Learning Outcomes

Colleges and universities participating in the College Portrait measure the typical improvement in students' abilities to think, reason, and write using one of three tests. This is part of a 4-year pilot project to better understand and compare what students learn between their freshman and senior years at different colleges and universities.

As the pilot project comes to a close, it is important to evaluate the effectiveness of the pilot project within the College Portrait and to disclose the results to the public. All VSA participating institutions are encouraged to report their results; CSULA reported results from one of the VSA-approved value-added SLO assessments below. Institutions who have not posted SLO results from one of the three VSA approved value-added pilot measures by the end of September 2012 are required to report their results here.

Results from the Collegiate Learning Assessment

The Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) measures critical thinking, analytic reasoning, problem solving, and written communication using a performance task and an analytic writing task. The scores from the tasks are reported separately below.

Test Administration Process

Test Information

Performance Task Results for First-time, Full-time Students

The increase in learning on the performance task is well above what would be expected at an institution testing students of similar academic abilities.

Freshman Score: 972
Senior Score: 1064
CLA score range: 400 to no maximum score.

Average EAA scores for tested students
Freshman Score: 854
Senior Score: 938

Analytic Writing Task Results for First-time, Full-time Students

The increase in learning on the analytic writing task is well above what would be expected at an institution testing students of similar academic abilities.

Freshman Score: 1024
Senior Score: 1097
CLA score range: 400 to no maximum score.