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“Sleek” Wonderlic Assessment Raises Caliber of WGU Student Body

The Client

Western Governors University is the only accredited university in the U.S. offering competency-based, online degrees. WGU was founded in 1996 by the governors of 19 western states and is the only university to be regionally accredited by four regional commissions. Additionally, WGU is a nationally accredited online university.

While distance learning offers convenience and flexibility, an online education at WGU also provides a rigorous quality education under the guidance of a dedicated faculty mentor, who is an expert in the program’s field of study. WGU is based in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The Product

Wonderlic Scholastic Level Exam - Quicktest: The SLE-Q is a short-form measure of general intelligence or cognitive ability - the most powerful predictor of training and job success. Administered from any location with Internet access, the SLE-Q is designed to be an estimate of a candidate’s ability to succeed in a specific educational or training program.

The SLE-Q is the shorter, educational pre-test version of the well-known Wonderlic Personnel Test that has been used in employee selection since 1937. This relationship provides the ability to directly compare student scores to those of applicants for jobs, providing a reliable estimate of his or her likelihood of successful performance within that particular career. In addition, a candidate’s cognitive ability is the best single predictor of student academic success.

Wonderlic can provide suggested minimum cut scores ranges for any training program based upon job applicant and U.S. Department of Labor statistics.

A forty-two year old business person doesn’t want to spend a Saturday afternoon at the local high school gymnasium taking the SATs with a bunch of teenagers. When adults decide to go back to school, they have different needs and priorities than their twenty-something counterparts. They don’t have the time or patience to sit through a day’s worth of testing to help them get into college, which is why Western Governors University treats them - and tests them - differently, says Alec Testa, director of assessment and institutional research.

“The SLE-Q is helping us be to be more selective, so that we have more control over the caliber of students in our programs.” - Alec Testa, Western Governors University

WGU is an online institution of higher education that caters to adult learners pursuing college degrees in business, IT and education. Being a web-based academic environment isn’t the only thing about WGU that breaks with the traditional college campus mold. The school, which began accepting applicants in 1999, enrolls new students every month, and uses a battery of assessments to move them through the program.

There is no collection of credits or letter grades, Testa says. Instead, students complete pre-assessments with mentors to prove what their competencies are and where their skills gaps lie. Based on the assessments students select classes to fill in the gaps and retake assessments when they’ve completed their programs. Testa feels this is a more accurate way to measure student’s skills. "Letter grades are meaningless."

Believing strongly in the value of assessments, WGU recently added the Wonderlic Scholastic Level Exam - Quicktest (SLE-Q) to its admissions process. The SLE-Q (or “Sleek” as it is referred to by WGU staff) is a short version of the Wonderlic Personnel Test that measures a candidate’s basic learning and problem solving abilities. “We chose the SLE-Q because it measures skills we think are appropriate for undergraduate students,” Testa says. “It’s also inexpensive and easy to deliver via the Internet.”

“We chose the SLE-Q because it measures skills we think are appropriate for undergraduate students,” Testa says. “It’s also inexpensive and easy to deliver.”

WGU has an open admissions policy and originally it didn’t assess candidates’ skills before admitting them. But after four years it was clear that some students were entering the institution who “just couldn’t do college level work,” Testa admits, so he began searching for a way to eliminate those applicants. “We needed a screening tool that could ensure students would do well here.” But it also had to be quick and painless for applicants, whose average age is 41. “We are not interested in traditional SAT assessment for our students. That wouldn’t suit our population.”

Instead he turned to Wonderlic, whose tests he remembers learning about in his own college courses on cognitive measurement twenty years ago. “Wonderlic has been around forever.” His Wonderlic sales rep helped him choose the SLE-Q based on Testas desire to have a quick cognitive measure that could be administered via the Internet from any location and would give him the most information about a candidate in the least amount of time. “Setting up the SLE-Q was easy, and the service and support from Wonderlic was really good,” he says.

WGU implemented the SLE-Q in late 2003, and applicants now take it when they apply to the program. In the first three months of using the SLE-Q, Testa gave the test to more than 800 applicants, setting the initial pass score at a conservatively low level. It failed to screen anyone out, he says, but it gave him valuable baseline data about the skills of the applicant population. After the first three months, Testa raised the cut score to eliminate the lowest ten percent based on the students who initially took the test.

As a result of adding the SLE-Q to the admission process, retention rates have increased and Testa expects graduation rates to be higher. “The SLE-Q is helping us be to be more selective, so that we have more control over the caliber of students in our programs.”

 

Last Updated: 1/1/08

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