First Year Writing Program (FYWP) Assessment - 2004-2006 - ENGL 121

Beginning in spring 2004, EMU's First Year Writing Program initiated an assessment that addressed two questions:

• If qualities of good writing are context-specific, what are the qualities of good writing in our local (EMU) context?
• To what extent are these qualities of good writing evident in the final portfolios of students in English 121 (EMU's required first-year writing course)?

These questions were grounded in current assessment research in composition and rhetoric as well as in assessment theory. Specifically, this project directly addressed the notions that good assessment is valid when it:

• Includes a “recognizable and supportive theoretical foundation as well as empirical evidence of students’ work”
• Includes “input from the scholarly literature about the teaching and learning of writing”
• Includes “inquiry into the use of the assessment results” (Huot).

and reliable when it is:

• based on “holistic, integrative interpretations” of readers who are knowledgeable about the context where assessment occurs
• grounds interpretations in “textual and contextual evidence and in rational debate among interpreters” (Moss).

The assessment involved:
Hearing about Qualities of "Good Writing" in EMU Context:
Convening focus groups of EMU students, staff, faculty, and administrators from outside of the FYWP (3 focus groups, 19 people)
Convening a focus group of EMU FYWP instructors (1 focus group, 7 people) (May-June 2004)
Click here for the "community" (e.g., outside of the FYWP) invitation
Click here for questions used in focus groups

Identifying Qualities of "Good Writing"
Transcribing focus group discussions (June-August 2004)
Analyzing focus group discussions (email Linda Adler-Kassner for information on coding strategies and dynamic criteria mapping) (September-November 2004)
Reporting back to focus groups results of analysis and hearing feedback about analysis (November 2004)

Developing Assessment Instrument Reflecting Qualities of "Good Writing"
Developing multiple drafts of assessment instrument (December 2004-April 2005)
Click here for the final draft of the assessment instrument

Analyzing the extent to which qualities of 'good writing' were evident in a sample of portfolios from ENGL 121
Gathering sample of 110 final portfolios from students in ENGL 121 (roughly 10% of one semester enrollment)
Convening teams of raters (2/team) to rate portfolios using assessment instrument

Click here for a report on the assessment process

Since the completion of this assessment, it has informed revisions to the curriculum in English 121 (Composition II: Researching the Public Experience), especially around the research process.
We will assess the effects of these revisions at the end of the Winter 2008 term with a more focused "drill down" assessment of research strategies in ENGL 121.