University of Wisconsin - La Crosse College Portrait

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Majors, Graduation and Next Steps
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Student Success & Progress
Discover how many students who start at UW-L 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 UW-L.

Student Learning at University of Wisconsin - La Crosse

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.

The CLA measures complex skills students should develop and improve during their college career. These include critical thinking, analytic reasoning, problem solving and written communication. The CLA uses two types of tasks to measure these. In Performance Tasks, students are presented with a question and several documents, e.g., letters, summaries of research. The students must evaluate the information in the documents and use it to answer questions or solve a problem. In Analytic Writing Tasks, students are presented with a topic and must develop or critique an argument or position on the topic.

Freshmen take the CLA during their first semester at college, and seniors take it during their last. Then, the scores of freshmen are compared with the scores of seniors. The scores of students at UW-L changed significantly between freshmen and senior years as shown below. In fact, the gains made by students UW-L were higher than gains made at 96% of other similar institutions. The specific scores for the Performance and Analytic Writing Tasks are presented below.

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 pilot project to better understand and compare what students learn between their freshman and senior years at different colleges and universities.

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 above what would be expected at an institution testing students of similar academic abilities.

Freshman Score: 1072
Senior Score: 1306
CLA score range: 400 to no maximum score.

Average EEA scores for tested students
Freshman Score: 1125
Senior Score: 1181

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

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

Freshman Score: 1084
Senior Score: 1263
CLA score range: 400 to no maximum score.