North Carolina State University gave the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) to a selection of freshmen and seniors during the 2007-08 academic year. The CLA is designed to measure students critical thinking, analytic reasoning and writing abilities. In addition, by having freshmen and seniors take the same exam, we can compare what students know when they start with what students know when they finish. This comparison will help us assess the learning that actually occurred while at NC State.
During the fall of 2007, 100 freshmen were randomly selected to represent the freshmen class as a whole; 91 freshmen took the CLA. In the spring of 2008, we asked a sample of 100 seniors to take the CLA. The sample of seniors was similar to the sample of freshmen in terms of their SAT scores, entering college/major, high school GPA, etc. Of those seniors asked, 64 took the CLA. The freshmen and seniors were paid $50 for their participation. The students who completed the CLA were broadly representative of their respective freshmen and senior classmates.