Janangelo, Joseph and Kristine Hansen. Resituating Writing: Constructing and Administering Writing Programs. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook, 1995.

This anthology addresses and situates WPA work as academic scholarship, arguing that WPAs are administrators who have a deep, necessary connection to their disciplinary speciality and knowledge. The book is organized in three sections: first addressing the philosohpical and ethical issues WPAs need to address when running a writing program; second explaining how WPAs can form productive relationships across the university campus, especially through WAC initiatives; and third, arguing that WPAs need to present their work as scholarship to higher administrators and form regional and national professional ties with other WPAs. The audience for this collection of essays, written by a variety of WPAs from many different institutions, who tell their own personal stories of crisis, change, and opportunities as a WPA, is for other WPAs, graduate students in composition and rhetoric, and other university administrators. This collection seeks to forward the agenda articulated in the Portland Resolution – to make WPA work recognizable as scholarship in and outside the discipline.

Notable Notes

Ed White chapter about WPA consultant visits as informed, qualitative assessment

Barrios, Barclay. “Grading the Writing Program Web Site: Assessing Some Assessments.” Computers and Composition (Spring 2004). http://www.bgsu.edu/cconline/barrios2/index.html

A writing program web site, since it serves numerous audiences (administration, funding sources, teachers, students, prospective students), must have multiple assessment measures because each assessment has advantages and disadvantages that serve each audience in a particular way. Barrios reviews the many kinds of assessment the Rutgers Writing Program used to evaluate its web site, including corporate tracking services, server logs, anecdotal evidence, online surveys, and print surveys. He draws on Yancey’s assessment heuristic as a possible alternative assessment.

Notable Notes

Yancey’s heuristic: 1. What arrangements are possible? 2. Who arranges? 3. What is the intent? 4. What is the fit between the intent and the effect? Yancey, Kathleen Blake. (2004). Looking for sources of coherence in a fragmented world: Notes toward a new assessment design. Computers and composition, 21, 89-102.

assessment depends on the audience – need to use lots

Hamp-Lyons, Liz and William Condon. “Questioning Assumptions about Portfolio-Based Assessment.” CCC 44.2 (1993): 176-190. In Assessing Writing. Eds. Huot and O’Neill. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. 315-329.

The authors argue that portfolio-based assessments are not inherently better, more valid, or more ethical than other kinds of writing assessments. It takes much critical reflection and work on the part of WPAs and writing instructors to make portfolio grading, which is more time consuming, a better assessment. They point out that more texts and genres doesn’t always make scoring decisions easier, that pedagogical and curricular values aren’t taken into account because they are not articulated, and that collaborative portfolio grading is often conflict-ridden, for it is hard to build consensus over assessment and instruction values. They do not argue to abandon portfolios, just to warn that certain stipulations – like criteria and conversations about program goals and values – must be in place to make portfolios a better assessment.

Quotable Quotes

“Increased accuracy is not an inherent virtue of portfolio assessment” (327).

Carter, Michael. “A Process for Establishing Outcomes-Based Assessment Plans for Writing and Speaking in the Disciplines.” Language and Learning Across the Disciplines 6.1. (2003): 4-29. In Assessing Writing. Eds. Huot and O’Neill. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. 268-286.

Carter outlines how the Campus Writing and Speaking Program, a WAC-like program at NC State (where Chris Anson is), helped departments establish speaking and writing outcomes for their undergraduate majors. Outcome-based assessment asks programs what skills and knowledge graduates should have, how the program helps students achieve these outcomes, and how the program could assess their outcomes and use their assessment for program development. The essay contains a list of questions departments can use to develop both objectives and outcomes (which, unlike objectives, are teachable and measurable), and gives an extended example of the outcomes from the anthropology department. Carter argues that such a discipline-specific assessment broadens both the responsibility of teaching writing and speaking skills to all departments and the timeline in which a student will be able to achieve these communication outcomes.

Notable Notes

outcomes need to be student-centered, faculty-driven, and meaningful (271)

outcome-based assessment does not assume that students will achieve something based on one course; it looks holistically at a whole program to assess its effectiveness in helping students achieve outcomes

compare to the continual improvement assessment in industry (ISO certification) and accountability movement in K-12 schools

the departments can state the disciplinary goals for their majors

what about students not in a traditional major? at schools with more blending capabilities?

articulate an assessment procedure with each department – including things like tests, exit interviews

the function of a speaking/writing professional (a WPA?) changes with outcome-based assessment

Durst, Russel K. , Marjorie Roemer, and Lucille M. Schultz. “Portfolio Negotiations: Acts in Speech.” In New Directions in Portfolio Assessment. Eds. Black, Diaker, Sommers, and Stygall. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1994. 286-300. In Assessing Writing. Eds. Huot and O’Neill. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. 218-232.

Using the conversations from two groups of instructors grading portfolios (one beginning TAs, the other veteran teachers), the authors show how the discussion that takes place is a performative speech-act (J.L. Austin), whereby the conversations are making judgments, negotiations, and setting community standards and values for student writing. They argue that grading papers is an act of reading, a complex and inexact process, that will result in inconsistency among graders, but this inconsistency is a powerful force that can be harnessed for further program development and identity-making.

Haswell, Richard and Susan Wyche-Smith. “Adventuring into Writing Assessment.” CCC 45 (1994): 220-236. In Assessing Writing. Eds. Huot and O’Neill. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. 203-217.

Haswell and Wyche-Smith, from Washington State University, explain the process by which they had a direct influence and control over the new writing assessment put into place at their institution and use their story to give other WPAs and composition faculty advice for how to create writing assessments. Their advice is four-fold: 1. assume administrators want the writing faculty to create the assessment (even if it seems that they don’t); 2. let local context shape the assessment, not vice versa; 3. take into consideration recent scholarship on assessment; 4. solict advice and suggestions from the teaching staff, who will be using and maintaining the assessment system.

Quotable Quotes

“Writing teachers should be leery of assessment tools made by others…they should, and can, make their own.” (204).

Notable Notes

my idea – look at writing assessment arguments K-U with the quality assurance programs put into place with ISO certification

Elbow, Peter and Pat Belanoff. “Portfolios as a Substitute for Proficiency Exams.” CCC 37 (1986): 336-339. In Assessing Writing. Eds. Huot and O’Neill. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. 97-101.

Elbow and Belanoff describe the process and the benefits of the portfolio evaluation system they piloted at Stony Brook University. Instead of focusing on scoring and ranking essays, the portfolio system they put in place, which is a pass/fail (C or not) from the student’s teacher and another instructor, is mastery- and competency-based. The focus of the assessment and the course turns to comments, feedback, advice, and revision as well as collaboration among teachers. Students see the portfolio assessment (which has a dry run mid-semester) as a hurdle to overcome. Elbow and Belanoff argue that even though the assessment process leads to much debate among teachers during the assessment, this disagreement and chaos is key to learning and the development of community standards and values.

Veal, L. Ramon and Sally Ann Hudson. “Direct and Indirect Measures for Large-Scale Evaluation of Writing.” Research in the Teaching of English. 17 (1983): 290-296. In Assessing Writing. Eds. Huot and O’Neill. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. 13-18.

Using data collected from over 2400 students attending 24 geographically, ethnically, and culturally diverse Georgia high schools, Veal and Hudson argue that holistically-scored essays allow for the best balance of validity, reliability, and cost-effectiveness in writing assessments. The students took different kinds of national achievement tests which scored their essays using holistic, analytic, primary-trait, or mechanics-based assessments, and the researchers detailed the validity, reliability, and costs associated with the different measures.

Quotable Quotes

“The consideration of the user at this point becomes whether the cost or the face validity of a direct assessment of writing is more critical” (18)

Notable Notes

1983 publication, before portfolios came on the scene, doesn’t address larger questions of ethics or the nature of validity

Williamson, Michael. “The Worship of Efficiency: Untangling Theoretical and Practical Considerations in Writing Assessment.” Assessing Writing 1(1994): 147-174. In Assessing Writing. Eds. Huot and O’Neill. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. 57-80.

Williamson argues that educators must adopt a different educational model – that of the craft workshop – in order to create an assessment theory and practice that breaks the hold of the god-terms of efficiency, fairness, and reliability. Williamson traces how the concept of efficiency led assessment and educational practices during much of the 20th century, resulting in invalid assessments only based on one data point, assessments grounded in standardized tests that allowed for the development and dominance of factory and bureaucratic educational models. He points to other assessment practices, like those in France, rely on interviews and non-standardized assessments given by the teacher, who knows the curriculum and students best. If teachers are to be treated as the professoinals that they are, Williamson argues, they should be given the right and the responsibility to develop and give assessments to their students.

Quotable Quotes

“we will need to begin to trust teachers” (78).

“the privilege of true professionalism” (79).

“For the most part, students are assessed, labeled, and placed in school curricula on the basis of their scores on succeeding standardized tests…these tests remain one of the single most important indicators of a child’s future” (67).

“efficiency has governed both the theoretical and practical developments in assessment” (69).

Notable Notes

development of psychometrics to allow for an objective, outside scorer – this is reversed in the craft workshop model with teacher in charge

child-centered assessment v. system-centered assessment

libertarian assessment

history of shift from oral exams to written exams to multiple-choice testing (Arthur Otis)

efficiency is a key American cultural and social force

craft workshop model (Shedd and Bacharach; Schon’s reflective practicioner)

assessment as a contextual, dynamic, continuous, reflective process

assessments with multiple data points converging = valid

Royer, Daniel J. and Roger Gilles. “Directed Self-Placement: An Attitude of Orientation.” CCC 50 (1998): 54-70. In Assessing Writing. Eds. Huot and O’Neill. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. 233-248.

Directed self-placement is an assessment practice that shifts the responsibilty of placing students in the right first-year composition section from the teachers/WPA/administration to the students themselves. Gilles and Royer describe how they developed the idea and explain its benefits: cost-effectiveness, efficiency, a decrease in complaints by students and teachers, positive attitudes in basic writing and first-year courses, and, most importantly, a sense of “rightness,” telling and showing students that they can be entrusted, with guidance, to making decisions about their own education. They argue that directed self-placement is as (or more) valid and reliable than placing students into sections based on their standardized test scores or the score on a timed essay. Directed self-placement is grounded in pragmatic (Dewey) educational philosophy and looks inward, to the needs of students, giving them power and control and starting a culture of communication from the first day on campus..

Quotable Quotes

“Our placement program thus relies on honest student inquiry and interactive participation” (246).

“Normally, the placement universe revolves around teachers; we choose the methods, we score the essays, we tell students what courses to take. Now we began to envision students at the center” (239).

Notable Notes

In the first few years that their writing program implemented directed-self placement (explained and conducted at freshman orientation), 22% of incoming freshman self-placed themselves in basic writing.

simplicity and elegance, honesty about directed self-placement

narrative at beginning about how students are introduced and guided through directed self-placement at orientation

placement tests should be future-directed, about a student’s education, not focused on what teachers might learn about students from one decontextualized sit-down writing prompt