Frequently Asked Questions About Critical Thinking and Oral Communication Core Competency Assessment

Q: What is the purpose of the core competency assessment?
Q: Who is being assessed?
Q: How have the plans been developed?
Q: When will the assessments take place?
Q: Who will be doing the assessments?
Q: How will the assessments proceed?
Q: Why share learning outcomes with students?
Q: What will be required of faculty in the assessment process?
Q: What will be done with the results of the assessment?

Q: What is the purpose of the core competency assessment?
The purpose of UVa's core competency assessment program is to determine University graduates' level of knowledge and skills in six areas: writing, computer technology, quantitative reasoning, scientific literacy, oral communication, and critical thinking.

Core competency assessment is an integral part of the University’s upcoming SACS (Southern Association of Colleges and Schools) reaccreditation process. Assessing core competencies began as part of a statewide effort in Virginia, directed by the State Council for Higher Education, to gather data and issue reports on the effectiveness of the Commonwealth's educational institutions.
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Q: Who is being assessed?
The competence of 3rd and 4th year undergraduate students is being assessed, not individual faculty, students, courses, or majors.
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Q: How have the assessment plans been developed?
Plans for how the six competencies are assessed have been developed by committees of faculty and administrators appointed by the deans of the undergraduate schools and the Vice President and Provost. Click here to see the membership of each committee. The Office of Institutional Assessment and Studies has facilitated the work of these committees and is in charge of implementing the plans.
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Q: When will the assessments take place?
Student work (papers and presentations) will be collected during both the fall and spring semesters. However, at this point IAS is focusing on the collection for fall semester only.

Other dates:
January 12 - 13, 2005 -- Fall evaluation workshop
May 18 - 19, 2006 -- Spring evaluation workshop
June 1, 2006 -- Summary results to schools from IAS
June 15, 2006 -- Final report submitted to SCHEV
August 1, 2006 -- Evaluation summary from schools to IAS
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Q: Who will be doing the assessments?
IAS is responsible for collecting the student work. Faculty already identified from each of the undergraduate schools will be evaluating student work through the coordination of IAS. In most cases, these faculty have worked on the development of the criteria and rubrics and are being compensated on an overload basis.

Cross disciplinary evaluation will be done when appropriate but not in the case of critical thinking for the hard sciences (biology, chemistry, physics, math). IAS is looking for faculty willing to assess critical thinking in the hard sciences. If you are interested, please contact Christian Steinmetz, Competency Assessment Coordinator.
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Q: How will the assessment proceed?
As of August 2005, the Office of Institutional Assessment and Studies is collecting data on undergraduate, upper-level courses that require one or both of the following:

• A paper in which students demonstrate critical thinking skills (for further information about what constitutes competent critical thinking, see student learning outcomes here).
• A formal oral presentation (for further information about what constitutes competent oral communication, see student learning outcomes here).

Based on the data collected a representative sample of papers and presentations will be selected (sampling plan). The papers and presentations will be collected over the course of fall and spring semesters.
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Q: What will be required of faculty in the assessment process?
IAS seeks to make the collection of presentations and papers as unobtrusive and simple as possible. IAS will work with those faculty whose courses have been selected to schedule times to videotape presentations. IAS will facilitate the collection of papers as well. Ideally, copies of papers will be provided prior to grading, either by asking students to turn in an extra copy of the paper, or by forwarding an electronic version of each paper to IAS.
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Q: What will be done with the results of the assessment?
The results will be reported to the deans and faculty committees of each school, as well as the Provost and SCHEV. How the results are used is determined by the deans of the schools. Ideally, the results will be compared with the goals and standards for both critical thinking and oral communication and shortcomings will be addressed through changes to the curriculum and/or teaching practices.
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