Report on Assessment of Senior Writing

Expository writing is one of the foundations—if not the cornerstone—of a Skidmore education. The English Department’s Expository Writing Committee has assessed student writing after students completed the Expository Writing Requirement. The College, however, has made no formal effort in the past to assess student writing as they conclude their Skidmore education. The May 2005 assessment of senior writing marks the first attempt to describe the writing of seniors from across the disciplines as they graduate. The assessment may have been limited by the number and range of papers collected; nonetheless, it provides an initial portrait of senior writing upon which to build future assessments of student writing and to consider the place of writing in the curriculum at Skidmore.

The Assessment Process

The assessment of senior writing was conducted 23-27 May. Six faculty members participated in the assessment: Erica Bastress-Dukehart (History), Tim Burns (Government), Sarah Goodwin (English, Associate Dean of the Faculty), Linda Hall (English), Michael Marx (English), and Denise McQuade (Biology). Ray Rodrigues, director of Assessment, also took part in the discussions.

The Office of the Director of Assessment solicited writing samples directly from students in April through email and invited them to upload their papers at a special site on Web-CT. Since relatively few students responded, the Director of Assessment and the Dean of the Faculty also requested that faculty submit senior papers from their courses. One hundred papers were examined for the senior writing assessment. The papers ranged from short response papers for a museum exhibit project to personal essays and formal seminar papers. The assessment did not include senior theses because theses undergo a rigorous writing and editing process as the faculty advisor and the student work throughout the semester (or in some cases the entire academic year). We recommend a separate assessment of senior theses in the future as part of the ongoing assessment of student writing. The one hundred papers reviewed represent 18 departments, distributed among the academic divisions as follows

Arts 4

Sciences 9

Social Sciences 37

Humanities 49

Pre-professional 1

Each reader was responsible for approximately 17 papers and wrote a report on those papers.

Expectations for Senior Writing

In preparation for reading and assessing senior writing, the readers met to discuss their expectations for senior writing, based in part on the senior writing they have received in their courses. Broadly characterized, senior writing should demonstrate competence in all areas of college writing. Although it may contain some mechanical errors, the writing itself should be engaged and ambitious, and less a mechanical undertaking. The writing should show an improved and increased vocabulary. Seniors should fulfill assignments better than underclasspersons by going beyond the assignments. Seniors should be better able to make an argument in their writing through both the presentation of ideas and rhetorical strategies. The readers agreed that seniors should be able to sustain a written argument over a long number of pages.

A Description of the Senior Writing Assessed

Although the pool of student papers did not represent a systematic, random sample of senior writing, it did offer a cross-section of the writing of our seniors. The readers encountered excellent papers as well as a small number of poor or unacceptable papers. Impressive research, graceful writing, and careful reading distinguished the excellent papers. The writing was clear and free of sentence level errors. Papers in this group demonstrated good word choice and appropriate vocabulary. These strongest papers showed the writer’s clear sense of direction and intellectual investment in the topic, conveyed through a compelling argument. The very best papers in this group showed astute analysis of primary materials, supported through a wide range of reading and research. These excellent papers, however, made up a small portion of the sample.

The majority of the papers demonstrated competence, but, as one reader put it, were uninspired and uninspiring writing. As they undertook the task of writing papers of twenty pages or longer, the senior writers seemed to encounter many difficulties: theses were undeveloped and not compelling; evidence was thin; and as the papers progressed, the internal logic suffered. Overall, this larger group of papers lacked sophistication. The readers described the writing as clichéd not only in vocabulary but also in ideas and argument. Like the strong papers, these papers presented evidence, but in a very limited fashion. Quotations did not lead to analysis and offered little sense of how the sources informed the thinking in the paper. Many of the papers seemed more like reports recounting information rather than arguments or analyses. The writers rarely seemed to question the assumptions informing the resources they consulted nor the very assumptions informing their own thought. These essays suffered because of their “immature” writing and reading skills. Errors—or sloppiness—were more pervasive, and the writing was hampered by limited or “primitive” vocabulary.

Toward a Rubric for Senior Writing

Although the assessment group resisted working from a prescriptive rubric to assess the student writing, the assessment activity may have moved us toward a descriptive assessment rubric for senior writing. Such a rubric might include the following categories:

Surface features

Grammar, punctuation

Vocabulary

Disciplinary vocabulary

Focus

Thesis

Argument

Originality

Evidence

Resources for supporting evidence

Conventions in presenting evidence, including citation and

documentation

Analysis

Of supporting evidence and quotations

Of underlying assumptions informing the work

Of the intellectual and historical context

Depth

Organization

Logic, internal and overall

Transitions

Observations and Questions

Given the limitations surrounding the essays pool, the readers felt it premature to offer recommendations at this point. Nonetheless, the assessment work was quite valuable in bringing to the foreground observations about the writing of our seniors and questions about writing instruction in the college.

1. Collecting student papers for future assessments. The pool of the essays included in this assessment did not provide us with a solid enough foundation upon which to draw conclusions and offer recommendations. Although well planned, simply inviting students to submit their senior papers electronically is not effective. Currently, Skidmore lacks a culture of assessment, both among students and faculty. We need to cultivate such a culture. Incorporating the collection of student writing directly into courses seems an effective way to assure that we can gather a representative, random sample of all student writing and that we have a full representation of writing across the disciplines. Our current sample was heavily weighted toward the humanities. We did not know if the papers submitted were randomly selected, chosen as “best” work, or offered for some other reason. Finally, although the focus of the assessment is on the students writing, having the assignment that prompted the paper would greatly benefit our assessment of that work. Collecting the papers directly in class might make it easier to get the assignments simultaneously. Similarly, establishing an e-portfolio for all students would help introduce a culture of assessment at the College and greatly facilitate the assessment of writing and other assessment projects. In addition, an e-portfolio might better allow longitudinal assessment of certain writing skills—such as vocabulary and disciplinary conventions—that develop over time.

2. Sampling papers from both the fall and spring semesters of the senior year. Although many of the essays demonstrated strong writing skills, we were concerned about the larger group of weaker papers. Several readers questioned whether this lower quality might be a reflection of the general attitude of some of our seniors in their last semester of college. Do seniors show a disengagement from the academic realities of college during the spring semester? If so, is that disengagement reflected in the quality of student writing? Might first semester senior writing offer a better picture of our students’ abilities as writers? More importantly, if such academic disengagement is true, what should we do as a college to address it and turn it around?

On a related note, several of the readers observed that the division in student writing reflected a similar split in our seniors. One group of students consists of good students, engaged in their studies, and eager to go deeper in their work; thus, this group pursues senior theses, projects, and other capstone experiences. The other group, perhaps the majority of our students, never seems to have caught fire intellectually; they are not budding scholars. How does college writing respond to the needs of these students? What might the College do to engage these students more fully in their intellectual growth and college education?

3. Preparation for writing long papers. Although senior science majors are typically encouraged to write concise papers of 3-10 pages suitable for publication, as noted earlier in the report, many faculty in other areas expect seniors to be able to sustain an argument effectively in a long paper of twenty pages or more. However, our assessment suggested that such a task was challenging for many students. Should students be doing more shorter writings designed around specific, focused tasks? How do we prepare students to write longer papers within the sequence of courses students take in their major and more broadly as students move from 100- to 200- to 300-level courses throughout the curriculum? Put another way, how do the papers we assign on the 300-level differ from 100- and 200-level assignments? How might we (better) sequence assignments across course levels to prepare students for the quality of writing we desire from seniors?

4. Forms of writing in the senior year. This assessment activity demonstrated that seniors are asked to write in a variety of forms their last year of college. As indicated earlier, the senior thesis is a special category of senior writing and requires a separate assessment. But as the sample rubric above makes clear, not all writing done by seniors falls into a single category with similar demands and characteristics. Analytical and argumentative essays share many characteristics. How do students learn to analyze? What can we do in our assignments and pedagogy to highlight the differences—as well as the relationship—between summary and analysis? The reflective essay appears to be another very popular form of senior writing. Reflective essays are serious intellectual tasks. How can we best guide students to be critical in such essays? What prompts best elicit reflective essays? Again, how might the work in the early years—especially with the new RAP—to prepare students to write successful reflective essays?

5. Engagement and senior writing. Although currently very much the buzzword at Skidmore and in higher education in general, “engagement” connotes such a broad range of attitudes and skills to students, faculty, and administrators that it may not be a meaningful word, especially in the context of writing assessment. While the readers looked for evidence of an engaged writer and an engaged mind when reading the senior writing samples, what is the evidence of an engaged writer? While engagement appears to be a requirement for excellent writing, engagement alone does not make for successful writing. What is the relationship, then, between engagement and excellence? How do writers move from a passion for a topic to a fine analysis or presentation of a subject?