CLA in the Classroom Academy

November 6-7, 2008

Thursday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m.; Friday, 8 a.m.-3 p.m.
Memorial Union, ASU Tempe campus

Register for this event

Email oue@asu.edu
Participation is limited to members of the ASU teaching corps.

About CLA in the Classroom Academy

The CLA in the Classroom Academy, facilitated by the Council for Aid to Education, is a two-day intensive workshop focused on curricular and pedagogical work that complements institution-wide assessment practices. The workshops will be held on November 6-7, 2008, (Thursday: 8:00AM – 5:00PM; Friday: 8:00AM – 3:00PM), at the Tempe campus. As you may know, ASU first-year students are currently participating in the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) developed by this organization. The CLA is an assessment program that measures how an institution as a whole contributes to learning and student intellectual development. Students are assessed on important measures such as critical thinking, analytic reasoning, problem solving, and written communication skills based on their responses to real world tasks. To learn more about the CLA first-year students are taking, click here.

CLA in the Classroom Academy (http://www.claintheclassroom.org/about) shifts the focus from general, institutional-level assessment to the course-level, disciplinary-based assessment work done by faculty. Classroom assessment is a valuable component of the teaching and learning process. The integration of quality assessment at the classroom, program, and institution levels will position ASU quite well for our upcoming Higher Learning Commission accreditation visit, as quality assessment is a primary expectation.

The CLA in the Classroom Academy provides an opportunity for faculty to create performance tasks for assessing students’ skills in critical thinking, analytic reasoning, problem solving, and written communication. In addition, faculty will learn how to use retired CLA performance tasks as classroom tools. The workshop will include a mixture of mini-lectures, small group activities, large group discussion, and independent work and is offered at no cost to faculty.

In particular, in the ASU CLA in the Classroom Academy participants will:

• Learn about rubric-based assessment;
• Brainstorm strategies for using performance-based assessment in their courses;
• Learn how to administer and score a disclosed CLA Performance Task, as well as how to use the results to do diagnostic work with students; and
• Participate in a hands-on workshop to develop performance tasks where course content or concepts can be embedded;

The Academy is free and registration is on a first come, first served basis. Please email oue@asu.edu to register for the workshop, November 6-7, held in the Memorial Union, Tempe campus.

Questions may be directed to Shelly Potts, 480-965-9291 or shelly.potts@asu.edu.