Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) aims to measure general skills such as critical thinking, analytical reasoning and written communication. These skills are often heralded as representing the core of undergraduate education. CLA includes three unique components: a performance task and two analytical writing tasks (make an argument and break an argument). Most of the results from our project are based on the performance task. The performance task allows students 90 minutes to respond to a writing prompt that represents a ‘real-word’ scenario in which students are presented with a task or a dilemma and need to use a range of background documents (from memos and newspaper articles to reports, journal articles, and graphic representations) to solve it. The testing materials, including the background documents, are accessed through a computer. The Council for Aid to Education has published several examples of representative performance tasks, which are available at http://www.collegiatelearningassessment.org/