Results of the effective communication skills in Spanish and ELASH II tests

As part of the commitment of the University of Puerto Rico Río Piedras Campus to improve the communication skills of its graduates, two test were administrated on August 7th 2008 to freshmen students: an effective communications skills in Spanish and the English Language System Assessment for Hispanics (ELASH II) tests.

The results of the tests were the following:

University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus*

Schools and their programs:
1. Architecture
2. Communications

Colleges and their programs:
1. Business Administration
2. General Studies
3. Humanities
4. Natural Sciences
5. Social Sciences

*Excludes students from the Education College.

Each assessment coordinator has both the results of their programs as well as the individual results of their students that took the tests.

OEAE's Assessment Cycle

We believe that assessment of student learning is a neverending process to strive to improve teaching practices as well as student learning.

Since communication is pivotal to our Office, we created a cycle to oversee how does each and every College or School and their respective programs develop and implement their Assessment Plans in order to achieve their goals.

Every so often we need an update from the assessment coordinators throughout our Campus in order to:
1) keep up to date their information in our databases.
2) offer help as to how construct rubrics to measure learning objectives.
3) analyze their data if they need assistance.
4) publish their findings.

Thus, in order to maintain our cycle, we need your feedback. Remember, we are here to give to each assessment coordinator a helping hand in this ongoing process.

Assessment Cycle - Adapted form Maki, P. (2001)

The neverending assessment cycle is a way to visualize how does each and every part contributes to achieve a particular goal.

Once we implement a change, we must gather and analyze data to corroborate if indeed the evidence points towards a higher achievement before we continue to work with another goal. If it does not, we must search for other ways to improve it.

Assessment is...

"... an ongoing process aimed at understanding and improving student learning. It involves making our expectations explicit and public; setting appropriate criteria and standards for learning quality; systematically gathering, analyzing, and interpreting evidence to determine how well performance matches those expectations and standards; and using the resulting information to document, explain, and improve performance. When it is embedded effectively within larger institutional systems, assessment can help us focus our collective attention, examine our assumptions, and create a shared academic culture dedicated to assuring and improving the quality of higher education."

- Angelo (1995)

"... the systemic collection, review, and use of information about educational programs undertaken for the purpose of improving student learning and development."

- Palomba & Banta (1999)

"... rich conversation about student learning informed by data."

- Ted Marchese (n.d)

Student Learning Assessment Coordinators - University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus

Click here to find a list of the student learning assessment coordinators of the different undergraduate academic programs by College or School of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus.