Universities leverage the domain and subject expertise their top teaching talent - both professors and teaching assistants (TAs) - to deliver a high quality learning experience to students. But to ensure learning is effective, students and teachers must be able to converse clearly, even if they don't share the same native language. In fact, many programs see that the way students rate a professor or TA can be affected if difficult to understand because of language issues.

Universities must ensure their teaching professionals have adequate language skills to effectively teach and communicate with students. Versant tests allow administrators to measure the spoken English or Spanish skills that are critical for effective teaching...and with Versant automated tests, screening can be done quickly and objectively, administered in just minutes by telephone or computer.

The Versant tests of spoken English or Spanish will help your university:

• measure the ability to understand and to be understood across a range of communications.
• support the implementation of acceptable language proficiency levels for teaching professionals throughout a university or program.
• evaluate the language proficiency of teaching professionals objectively and consistently.

Versant tests of spoken language enable you to:

• hire teaching professionals who have the speaking and listening language skills needed to teach effectively.
• screen teaching staff in less time, streamlining your recruiting and placement processes while reducing assessment costs.
• deliver more objective, consistent assessments without the variability typical of multiple evaluators and administrations.

The Versant tests of spoken language are built using criteria developed by expert linguists. The Ordinate scoring system has been extensively field trialed and validated with reference to the most qualified human evaluators of language proficiency, fluency, and pronunciation.

The Versant testing systems allows you to evaluate all of your employees on an equal basis with objective, unbiased scoring. It complies with the legal and professional guidelines in the Uniform Guidelines for Employee Selection Procedures and the Principles for the Validation and Use of Personnel Selection Procedures governing the use of tests for high-stakes decision-making in organizations.

Your administrators can easily deliver the Versant tests by having teaching professionals take the test over the telephone or on a test center computer. Ordinate automatically scores an employee test, making a detailed score report available for you in the reporting system within minutes of being submitted.