Welcome to UChicago’s Office of Language Assessment!
At the OLA, we:
- develop strategies to greatly expand and integrate the University’s language testing programs, for language courses offered during the academic year and for the Summer Language Institute and English Language Institute.
- develop and update exams in consultation with language instructors and language program directors; recruits and coordinates test developers and raters; maintains accurate records of test results and provides those results to appropriate parties; schedules and facilitates testing, including preparation of materials and communication with students.
- undertake appropriate research and development projects to ensure the validity of the interpretation and use of the test scores that CLC administers. This includes the analysis of test data, including scores and ratings earned by individuals and groups, scoring reliability by individual raters and across individual tests and their different versions.
- design and implement evaluative instruments to conduct empirical research to evaluate the tests so that test users feel confident that the scores are valid for their intended purposes.
Meet our Director
Ahmet Dursun – Director, Office of Language Assessment
Ahmet Dursun is the founding Director of the Office of Language Assessment, where he is responsible for researching, developing, and managing the University’s language assessment programs. He is co-founder of the Language Pedagogy Innovation Initiative (LPII) at the University of Chicago where he has been designing and leading workshops in second language assessment and pedagogy. His work focusing on computer-assisted language teaching, testing research and practice, and test validation have appeared in multiple peer-reviewed journals, edited volumes, and books. He speaks Kurdish, Turkish, and Arabic, and loves playing soccer in his free time.
