Writing Assessment and Writing across the Campus

Writing Assessment

The Writing Program has been involved with Assessment since 1990. We have been investigating possible strategies, implementing various approaches, evaluating results, modifying when appropriate, and refining activities for a number of years.

PHASE I: For ten years, we were involved with Phase I of Assessment which was campus-wide and involved student and faculty surveys, portfolio collection, and exit interviews.
PHASE II: We entered Phase II of Assessment in 2000 where we focused on the academic units--interviewing faculty and students.
PHASE III: Phase III of Assessment began in fall 2002 and is a Gen Ed Communication Assessment, involving portfolio collection and evaluation for all first-year writing courses. In 2005, we completed a Gen Ed Humanities Assessment.

For those who seek more details about methodology, results, and recommendations, reports are available in the Writing Program Director's office--Moon 105.

Writing Across the Campus

Assessment has been a necessary component of the Writing Program and provides us with a lens to focus on the complex activity of writing. The evaluation process has proved to be cyclical. As data collection proceeds, analysis develops, generating more ideas to guide course design, which in turn influences program decisions. The process begins anew as the innovations suggested by the analysis require evaluation. As Guba and Lincoln state in Fourth Generation Evaluation, assessment is “a teaching/learning process” that is continuous, recursive, divergent, and emergent.

We do not view assessment as a mere collection of data, but as a multiple feedback loop that is catalytic, adaptive, and dynamic. The most valuable aspects of our three phases of assessment are the actions that have been taken over the years as a direct result of our findings. There is more of an awareness of writing and communication across the disciplines on campus—with an emphasis on communicating in, across and through the various writing communities. We have a Writing Resource Center and a whole range of writing and literature courses. We have conducted numerous campus-wide workshops on responding to writing, grading, and editing, and we have emphasized a presence of communication on campus through our various student publications and activities.