Starting this fall, the State Council for Higher Education will require all public, four-year Virginia colleges and universities to administer competency assessments in writing and technological skills to their students. The tests are designed to help institutions pinpoint strengths and weaknesses in the teaching of fundamental skills.
Similar tests in math, science, oral communication and critical thinking will also be required within several years.
SCHEV approved competency exams last November, and officials are framing details this week in Richmond.
The development of competency testing was one of the recommendations made by the Republican Gov. James S. Gilmore III's Blue Ribbon Commission on Higher Education, SCHEV Deputy Director Karl L. Schilling said.
"There was concern about the quality of educational experiences students were receiving at Virginia institutions with a lot of primarily anecdotal evidence [and] testimony to the fact that business people were hiring college graduates who could not write, compute or think clearly," Schilling said.
Because SCHEV will not issue a standardized student competency assessment, administrators at Virginia's public institutions will decide individually how to measure the degree of their students' ability in the six selected subjects.
"We know that Virginia's colleges and universities serve different students, different missions," SCHEV Executive Director Phyllis Palmiero said.
Neither students nor schools will be penalized by SCHEV for poor results as assessments are designed as a self-check for an institution's own expectations, Palmiero said.
At the University, the College, the Architecture School and the Nursing School will test their students writing abilities by reviewing randomly selected portfolios from required English courses, ENWR 105/106 and ENWR 110. Students will not be involved in the process, and evaluators will not know the identity of the portfolio's author, said Ned Moomaw, a government professor and executive director of the Office of Institutional Assessment and Studies.
"The results of the assessments are for the internal use of the institution," Moomaw said. "If the teaching of writing is not effective, it should be changed. This assessment is designed to show that."
The Engineering School evaluators will assess students by reading randomly selected fourth-year theses for writing ability.
For assessing the technology competency, evaluators will test randomly selected fourth-year students to perform 10 basic computer tasks, such as setting up a personal computer and using a word processor to create a text document. Engineering students will be tested on 17 skills. Students will be given a numerical value of their skills, depending on the number of required tasks they successfully perform.
"I expect U.Va. to do well because the students are pretty good, to say the least," Moomaw said.
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