UCA will administer one more Collegiate Assessment of Academic Proficiency [CAAP] exam this month before pausing to consider other general-education assessment methods, associate provost Jonathan Glenn said.

The exam, also known as the rising junior exam, was a required test for Arkansas college and university sophomores until state Sen. Sue Madison (D-Fayetteville) proposed a bill eliminating the requirement. Gov. Mike Beebe signed the bill into law last month.

Glenn said the law won’t go into effect until sometime after July and as such, UCA must continue to administer any tests previously scheduled until then.

“There is [an exam]scheduled for the end of this month,” Glenn said. “We have to comply with it until the end of July. It’ll be the last one we do.”

Laws passed by the Arkansas Legislative Session don’t go into effect until 90 days after the end of the session. The 2007 legislative session ended May 1.

“One problem with the old exams was we didn’t have very much input into what the assessments were going to be,” Glenn said. “We’re going to think about what we want to do in order to assess general education now. At this point, it’s unknown.”

Glenn said it’s common for universities to have assessment exams for students in order to judge the effectiveness of the general education program.

“General education is important and assessment is one of the ways we know how well it’s doing,” Glenn said. “Obviously whatever we do there’s going to be an interruption [on students].”

The CAAP test was previously a five-hour exam and tested each student on all areas of general education, but was shortened to the two-hour, sampling exam it is now because of student complaints, Glenn said.

Glenn added that the process for selecting a new assessment program will likely take a full academic year.

“We don’t want to commit to a huge assessment that puts a burden on students or ourselves when we’re not sure it’s what we want to do,” Glenn said. “Everything has been thrown out the window.”

The $5 tuition fee associated with the rising junior exam is actually a blanket fee for all assessment testing, Glenn said, and will more than likely not be pulled from future tuition fees.

“Although the fee came in during the rising junior exam, it was at that time that assessments in general were becoming firmly established as something universities do,” Glenn said. “We have to ask ourselves, how shall we best invest the university’s and the students’ money?”