What’s Faculty Development got to do with it?  Writing Assessment and Faculty Development Connections Carol Rutz Carleton College

From its beginnings, Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) has served as a faculty development program.  One illustration:  In the mid-1970s, long before the term WAC existed, Carleton College was  cited by Elaine Maimon (in her chapter in Fulwiler & Young’s Programs That Work) that distributed the teaching of writing among faculty in several disciplines.  That curricular change occurred in the context of a robust faculty development initiative.  For two full weeks in the summer, faculty in classics, religion, history, political science, and other disciplines worked together as they studied then-current theory and practice of writing instruction.  For those pioneers, the responsibility for teaching writing was overtly tied to specific preparation in writing pedagogy.

In this particular institutional context—a small, selective, liberal arts college—the sharing of responsibility for writing instruction helped emphasize good writing as an institutional value.  One result:  movement away from a required first-year English course for all students to a WAC model, where a course in one of many disciplines would satisfy the college’s writing requirement.

Over time, some problems emerged.  First, the assessment of student writing was invested in the teacher of the WAC class, which established tension between assigning a grade for the course and certifying the student’s proficiency as a writer.  Second, because certification occurred in dozens of WAC courses, administration of the college-level writing requirement was inconsistent.  Third, WAC instructors were not held to common criteria for writing proficiency, which exacerbated problems with inconsistency.

A 1996 internal review summarized these problems and others, leading faculty on the review task force to recommend institution of a portfolio system to send students a more consistent message about the college’s values.  However, no one could quite imagine how the portfolio would be administered:

·         Who would read portfolios?

·         If faculty would be readers, how would they be trained and compensated?

·         How could a student’s writing in all disciplines be fairly evaluated by one or two readers?

·         Where would portfolios be stored?  Would students keep them and produce them at intervals?

·         How would a portfolio affect advising?

·         How would a portfolio demonstrate proficiency?  What would constitute a “pass?”

·         Wouldn’t we be abandoning writing instruction in favor of assessment?  Aren’t we selling out our liberal arts values?

·         Our current system is a little odd, but we’re used to it.  Why change now?

Fortunately, a request from the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools for an institutional assessment plan provided the impetus for connecting faculty development, WAC, and writing assessment.  With writing listed as one of Carleton’s primary learning goals, the college was prepared to address faculty concerns with the certification system.  Through a series of faculty development activities funded through an external grant (focus groups, visiting speakers with expertise in writing assessment, and workshops led by assessment experts), Carleton faculty designed a mid-career writing portfolio for all students.  A pilot group from the class of 2004 completed portfolios; using those portfolios, faculty developed a scoring procedure; and all students in the class of 2005 and younger are now submitting portfolios for faculty evaluation.  A description of the portfolio (written for a student audience) is available at:

http://www.acad.carleton.edu/campus/wp/portfolio.html

(Follow links from this page for the original proposal submitted to faculty before the pilot phase.)

Although this portfolio is still very new, Carleton faculty can identify teaching and learning outcomes, including the following:

·         Initial concerns (listed above) have largely disappeared.  In particular, the issue of writing instruction has been directly addressed through faculty development workshops, brown bag sessions, new faculty programming, and more.  Writing pedagogy is thriving at Carleton.

·         Having worked for consensus on portfolio criteria, Carleton faculty can succinctly describe the rhetorical tasks students must demonstrate by the end of the sophomore year.

·         Students quickly learn where writing occurs in the curriculum, and they seek out writing opportunities to fulfill the portfolio criteria.

·         Faculty and students now share a rhetorical lexicon that shows up in more detailed assignment sheets and syllabi—not to mention more sophisticated questions from students about their writing.

·         Students’ reflective essays that introduce their portfolios speak to their experience as college writers, offering valuable information about the effect writing has on them and their education.

Carleton’s experience illustrates important principles for linking faculty development and assessment:

·         The inertia of the status quo can mask institutional habits that do not serve anyone.  (Most of us at Carleton look back at the one-course method of certifying writing proficiency with wonder.  Why did we put up with it for so long?)

·         Faculty accurately perceive problems in curriculum and instruction and want to solve them.

·         Assessment can provide the answers to questions that faculty actually want to answer.

·         The process of developing local assessments leads seamlessly into curriculum development, mentoring, workshops on teaching techniques and topics, and other activities that address issues important to faculty and students—whether immediate or for the longer term.

Questions to consider:

1.       If your campus has a WAC program, how are faculty supported in their writing pedagogy?

2.       What are the goals of your WAC program?

3.       Does your institution have an office of Institutional Research or Assessment?

4.       What information do faculty and students have available to them about the effects of WAC on teaching and learning?

5.       What feedback does your institution receive from parents, alumni, and employers about your graduates and their writing ability?

6.       How do existing data on your curriculum, student performance, post-graduate placement, and alumni satisfaction relate to the goals of your WAC program?

7.       What specific assessment measures could tell you more about your WAC program and help you improve it?

For further information on assessment in general, including writing assessment, consult the American Association of Higher Education’s excellent web site:

http://www.aahe.org/assessment/

For bibliographic purposes, CompPile, the resource developed by Richard Haswell and Glenn Blalock, is utterly essential:

http://comppile.tamucc.edu/

A Brief Bibliography on WAC, Faculty Development, and Assessment (from CompPile)

Teaching Composition

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