Faculty Development: Using Writing for Assessing Learning

By Jack Prostko, Director, Faculty Development Center
Two recent initiatives have emphasized the importance of student writing in the UMBC curriculum. First, the increased attention given to assessing student learning outcomes that I discussed in my articles in September and October highlights the role writing can play in measuring student learning. And second, the Writing Intensive Course requirement that will now be part of undergraduate education has caused faculty and departments to re-examine existing courses to see if they fit—or can be made to fit—the criteria outlined for WI courses.
Some faculty are hesitant to consider developing their courses into ones that meet the criteria of ‘writing intensive’ even though they already include some writing in the class. Their doubts may be that they are not professionally trained to teach writing or that adding more writing will significantly increase the amount of time they will be required to spend correcting and commenting on student papers.
The goal of disciplinary writing courses, though, is to teach content through writing. Our first thought shouldn’t be that we will now endlessly be correcting grammar problems or copy-editing student work. In teaching content through writing, we first focus on ideas and arguments and evidence. If students have difficulty with basic English or grammar skills, these should be pointed out and students should be directed to find a tutor through the Learning Resources Center. We are indeed trained to recognize solid writing in our disciplines—writing that clearly and cogently states information or makes a case. These are the skills we are most interested in cultivating in our students as they take time, on their own, to brush up whatever basic skills are lagging.
Therefore, commenting on papers will focus principally on whether there was a clear argument, whether the structure was effective and whether the evidence supported the thesis. Such comments can be concise—a short list of what is working in a paper and what needs to be improved is far more effective as feedback than a paper covered with detailed comments, corrections, and edits. Research in the teaching of writing has shown that copy editing student work has little educational benefit—it’s not worth the time it takes. Many of our comments can be summarized by a prepared rubric that highlights specific areas (thesis, organization, language, sentence structure, evidence) and explanations of levels of achievement under each. To see examples of or to create your own rubrics, see http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php
Our goal in WI courses is to help students understand what constitutes good writing in our discipline, which may have more specific requirements for how an idea or argument is presented, including the structure and language appropriate for an acceptable piece of writing in biology or history, for example. As experts in a discipline, only we can provide the relevant models and feedback that directs students as they develop a range of writing strategies beyond what they may have learned in composition classes.
But whether we teach WI courses or not, if we use writing at all in our classes there are some principles that help our students learn the material better and help us provide useful feedback. Rather than assigning papers in the middle or end of a semester, and discovering too late that students need basic help, front load courses with short writing assignments. One- or two-page papers in the first weeks of the semester make students recognize that we are serious about their writing and that they should be prepared to take time for writing throughout the semester. It also allows us to direct students to tutorial help immediately.
Short assignments can be formal or informal but should include student reflection on the assignment itself—that is we should ask them to explain how they went about writing the piece. How did they start? What gave them difficulty? Did they revise at all? What helped or didn’t help in developing the argument or backing up their claims? Reflection on the strategies used to write helps students know that there are a whole variety of techniques for successfully producing writing and that when one isn’t working, they can try something else.
Assessment using writing samples throughout a semester, including reflective writing about how assignments are approached, can be best accomplished through having students gather a portfolio of their work. At the end of the semester students can be asked to write a short summary of what skills they feel they have improved and what they intend to work on in the future. And finally, if we create several courses in our majors that require students to do this, we will have a clear way of assessing students’ learning and writing over the whole of their UMBC careers.