FALL 2009 FIQWS WRITING SKILLS ASSESSMENT

March 2010

Assessment of Writing Skills in FIQWS was conducted, February 17th-March 1st, 2010 by veteran FIQWS composition instructors: Steve Foster, MacAdam Smith, Gina Marten, Hilary Sortor, Casey Gordon, and Christopher Kodila. The project was designed and coordinated by Ana Vasovic, Assistant to the Provost for Special Projects.

The rubric norming session was conducted by Prof. Richard Braverman (member of the writing rubric development team).

Sixty two Final research papers for several FIQWS courses were reviewed (thirty papers were collected from three FIQWS classes via ePortfolios, an additional thirty two random papers were submitted by FIQWS instructors.)

Each paper was scored by two readers; in case of a discrepancy a third reader was employed.

Findings and recommendations

Overall, students’ papers are satisfactory; areas that can be improved are described below:

1. Thesis - many papers lack strong thesis statements. Instead, they contain several weak ideas, lacking in focus and development. Often, the thesis can only be assumed, hidden somewhere in the body of the paper; papers read as “book reports”.

Recommendation: Train FIQWS instructors to spend more time on thesis instruction; require that the thesis be a clear sentence at the end of the introduction paragraph.

2. Structure and Organization – affected by the lack of a clear thesis; improving thesis statements should result in stronger structure and organization of the papers. Aside from a lack of thesis and direction issue, papers do have overall good structures, indicating that students are working from outlines. Paragraph organization is weak and needs improvement.

Recommendation: Improve thesis instruction; better structure and organization should follow. An assignment description would be useful in assessment; different types of assignments are being given for the final papers which affects the structure and organization.

3. Evidence and Development–evidence is listed, but often not analyzed/explained/justified; mostly summarizing without interpretation; no distinguishing between important and not important evidence; no source evaluation; overuse of quotations instead of paraphrasing, summarizing and employing the information.

Recommendation: Train FIQWS instructors to dedicate more time to the discussion ofsource validity. Instructors can discuss scholarly sources vs. other sources (and how to access them) and require a certain number of scholarly sourcesto be used for the final paper.

4. Mechanics and Style – There are a lot of grammar issues, some caused by ESL, some not.

Recommendation: Introduce grammar instruction in FIQWS via grammar software and additional WritingCenter workshops.

General Recommendations:

Create a forum for FIQWS faculty that will meet regularly and discuss pedagogical issues

Organize additional workshops in the Writing center for students

Include Critical Thinking into the writing rubric, as they are inseparable

The rubric should have a five point scale (not the four point scale)

Ideal FIQWS scenario: 2 semester course – 3 credits in the first semester introducing critical thinking, grammar and basic essay composition; 6 credits next semester - topic study and research paper development

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Scale 1-4 reflects the ability range from the beginning level to the accomplished level – it is meant as a “college span” scale; it is expected that the majority of freshmen would be at the lower end of the scale. It is often a case that an A paper in FIQWS would be receiving scores of 2, for example.

1 - beginning

2- developing

3 - competent

4 - accomplished

AVERAGE
Thesis / Structure and Organization / Evidence and Development / Mechanics and Style
1.85 / 2.05 / 2.13 / 2.11

> Interrater Reliability

> Structure and Evidence and Mechanics

> Thesis Organization Development and Style

> 0.385401 0.438199073 0.541429421 0.3356069

The coefficient can range between 0.0 (two judges in complete disagreement) to 1.0 (complete

agreement).

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CLOSING THE LOOP

The findings and recommendations were presented to the General Education Implementation Committee in a meeting on March 10, 2010. The following motions were approved by the committee:

1. Create a forum for FIQWS composition faculty that will meet monthly and include instructional guidance:

  • Importance of thesis instruction – thesis statement to be required at the end of introductory paragraph
  • Importance of instruction on information source validity - Instructors need to discuss scholarly sources vs. other sources (and how to access them) and require a certain number of scholarly sources to be used for the final paper
  • Discussion of any pedagogical issues

Experienced Composition full time faculty (Prof. Wilner, Valladares, others) will take turns attending the meetings as mentors.

*******Implemented as of March 2010.

2. Introducegrammar instruction in FIQWS via grammar software and additional WritingCenter workshops.

********The following WritingCenter workshops will be implemented as part of FIQWS Midterm Intervention strategy starting April 2010:

a. FIQWS Fridays at the Writing center

FIQWS students can work on writing assignments or areas of weaknesses. The writing consultants chosen for this project are primarily graduate students, with multiple years of experience working with freshmen. The goal of this initiative is to offer a coordinated support system to freshmen students enrolled in FIQWS.

b. Writing Series Workshops

Workshops focusing on: note taking, essay revision, critical thinking, thesis statements, essay organization, paragraph building, document formatting, credibility of sources and grammar.

c. ESL support

3. Follow up on recommendation to include a critical thinking component into the writing rubric

4. Follow up on recommendation to revise the writing rubric (to be proposed by the assessment team)

5. Share the writing skills rubric with instructors and students (should be included in the syllabus)

*******Implemented as of March 2010

6. Recommendation: Identify a Ph.D. Rhetoric/Composition specialist to work with FIQWS composition instructors on a continuous basis – needs approval by the Provost and English Department