ASSESSMENT OF LOWER-DIVISION WRITING CLASSES
AUGUST 2000

In Spring 2000, the University Writing Program conducted a curriculum assessment of its lower-division courses-UWRP 1150 and UWRP 1250. This assessment was spurred by the university's response to a recent external review that mandated enforcement of the lower-division requirement, which has, for several years, been a victim of underfunding. The university has established a committee to design a lower-division writing course; we hope that the UWRP assessment will be valuable to this committee as well as informative for teachers of UWRP lower-division writing.

A volunteer committee of UWRP faculty-Rebecca Dickson, Mary Jarrett, Judith Lavinsky, Katie Palmer, Deborah Viles, and Tobin von der Nuell-read a packet of materials to prepare for a discussion of the current courses' strengths and weaknesses and to recommend a revision to the curriculum. The packet contained student papers collected from UWRP 1150 and UWRP 1250 instructors during the Fall 1999 semester and copies of all assignment sheets from these instructors. Of the 10 instructors who taught one of these classes in Fall 1999, seven submitted the requested data: copies of written assignments and of representative student papers-weak, average, strong-from each class. The committee received a total of 40 papers; each committee member read about 20 student papers and all assignment sheets. Each packet also contained the CCCC (Conference on College Composition and Communication) position statement on assessment, the CCCC outcomes statement for lower-division composition, the UWRP outcomes statement report for the last several years, and the UWRP upper-division outcomes statement.

Committee members reviewed the packets and then attended a day-long meeting to discuss the lower-division curriculum. Their goal was not to assess individual papers, but to assess, in light of their own classroom experience, what both the papers and the assignments revealed about the UWRP curriculum. Specifically, committee members were asked to consider the effectiveness of the curriculum and whether the assignment goals were clear and consistent across sections. In addition, members were urged to raise their own questions and make pertinent observations. The committee's initial discussion focused on members' responses to these general questions.

What are the papers' strengths?
Student papers exhibited some clear strengths, especially in structure and organization. It was clear to the readers that even the weakest papers relied on an organizational strategy. UWRP 1250 papers also revealed clear strides toward complex content.

What are the papers' weaknesses?
Despite a lower-division writing requirement in the College of Arts and Sciences, students currently are exempted from the course based on their performance on the verbal sections of standardized tests. Consequently, most of the students taking UWRP lower-division courses have scores in the bottom 30% of CU applicants. As might be expected from the population, many weaknesses show up in student papers from these classes. Weaknesses in logic and development and the lack of sophistication distressed committee members. The committee especially noted that the papers consistently ignored counter-argument, or dealt with it in only a perfunctory way. The committee also noted pervasive problems in surface-level errors (spelling, grammar, syntax, diction, and citation format).

The answers to these two questions naturally triggered a caution light for committee members: How will this assessment-based on skewed data because it only draws from the 20-30% of freshmen students who take the course, not from a representative sample of all freshman students-reliably inform the design of a curriculum for all incoming students? This report, then, acknowledges this weakness in the data. Nevertheless, the committee members are confident that their classroom experience in both lower-division and upper-division courses positively informs the observations and recommendations made here.

Are assignment goals consistent?
No. Although many classes had assignment goals in common, including effective summary and some sort of argument based on a prompt, the assignments varied widely. Some assignments asked students to select their own topics for analysis; others provided detailed data sets with explicit questions from which to formulate theses; some even provided a set of theses from which students could choose. The committee's response to these differences was that, while the UWRP clearly stresses analytical writing for lower-division courses, the classes do not have specific outcomes or an established progression of assignment types that would provide consistency.

Given these answers to the broad questions that propelled the discussion, committee members raised and discussed many other questions. The results of their discussion break down into four major categories: student outcomes for lower-division writing; curriculum design; course logistics; and teacher training and support.

STUDENT OUTCOMES FOR LOWER-DIVISION WRITING

The WPA Outcomes Statement provides an excellent basis from which writing programs can build their own local outcomes statement. The suggestions made here often overlap with outcomes in the WPA Statement; others are detailed to local needs. These suggested outcomes are by no means exhaustive.

Rhetorical Knowledge
By the end of first year composition, students should

• focus on an audience and purpose for their writing
• establish a rhetorical context by identifying a question at issue
• understand genre as a strategy that is part of a larger construct based on rhetorical situation

Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing
By the end of first year composition, students should

• write in several genres, including summary, description geared for a particular audience, analysis based on descriptive data, personal writing such as reading response, reflection, and/or creative nonfiction
• make connections between their own ideas and those expressed in texts and by peers
• understand that writing is a series of steps that includes grappling with an original idea, pre-writing, idea development, deep revision, and editing

Processes
By the end of first year composition, students should

• understand the importance of reading to critical inquiry and development of style, vocabulary, etc.
• draw inferences to analyze subject matter
• make distinctions between positions (be able to dialogue)
• devise structure according to purpose
• develop voice/tone appropriate to rhetorical purposes

Knowledge of Conventions
By the end of first year composition, students should

• learn formats for different kinds of texts, e.g., a business letter
• understand what plagiarism is
• appropriately cite sources
• control surface-level features

CURRICULUM DESIGN

The committee has several recommendations for curriculum design based on the outcomes discussed. In addition, committee members suggested many specific assignment ideas to accomplish curriculum goals.

Recommendations

• Both the WPA Outcomes Statement and the UWRP Outcomes Statement for Upper-division Courses begin with the category "Rhetorical Knowledge." Because such knowledge is so fundamental to good writing, we suggest that all courses pay explicit attention to rhetorical elements of writing: purpose, audience, rhetorical situation. Familiarity with research in this area, such as Ellen Barton's notion of "problematizing" an issue, would help achieve this end. (See "Evidentials, Argumentation, and Epistemological Stance," College English, 55, p. 745-769.)
• UWRP courses need to clarify for students their exclusive focus on a particular analytical format. Further, because writers often develop important skills, both in thinking critically and in developing voice and style, through personal writing, the lower-division curriculum should provide space for personal writing that demands critical thinking and should work from assignments that ask students to think and write out of their own rhetorical contexts.
• The curriculum should not be literature-based. Students are often unprepared to delve deeply into literature. Literature also offers a rather narrow focus. While papers suggest that students work well when given a particular data set to analyze, data must be focused. Broad data sets ("Analyze a recent movie or television show") are unmanageable for both teacher and student.
• Given the importance of reading in writing, the course should expect students to read and to discuss what they read. We suggest readings from The New York Times or other current issues texts, texts focused on cultural literacy, or an anthology of writing, perhaps one including both well-established rhetoric models and texts about current issues. To give teachers the freedom to work from their own strengths, the program could adopt a pool of texts, from which teachers would choose the one with which they are most comfortable.
• Students' major assignments should ask them to work through a continuum of strategies-from description to analysis/argument. Between these major pieces, they should complete a series of short assignments and in-class exercises to help them transfer skills from one piece of writing to the next as well as to introduce new skills. Some committee members thought students should be introduced to argument-with a concrete assignment-before analysis, which can often require more abstract reasoning skills. Whatever shape this continuum takes, the committee members strongly believe that the focus in lower-division courses should be on building skills and working toward academic analysis and argument, not on accomplishing refined analysis/argument. For example, an assignment to argue a very specific point in a letter to the editor or other very specific audience is appropriate in a lower-division course; more complex arguments belong in upper-division courses.
• Grammar/syntax/diction should be taught in the context of other work as often as possible. Taught this way, these skills become part of the writing process rather than something that is "fixed" after the thinking is done. Again, a focus on relationships between ideas and on reading good writing should help students with these skills.

Assignment Ideas
The committee's discussion of the sample papers and assignments suggests that a progression of assignments that makes increasing demands on the students' critical thinking and writing skills would be the ideal for lower-division composition. Further, the committee noted that assignments which force students to evaluate one thing in light of another emphasize critical thinking. Many of the assignments currently used capitalize on this type of design; a notebook of such assignments organized by goal would be an asset to instructors.

The following list itemizes other assignment ideas.

• Use a descriptive assignment to work toward two or three potential analyses, each focusing on a different audience. For example, students might be asked to describe Norlin Library, then to explain to fellow students what the building's design says about education, then to write a letter to a library administrator suggesting that a particular space might be used differently to better serve patrons' needs.
• Concisely summarize the central argument of an article or essay.
• Defend a course of action based on a scenario prompt, like an LSAT prompt.
• Apply a definition to a data set. For example, does a particular magazine advertisement meet the feminist definition of pornography?
• Develop a single counterargument in response to a reading.

In addition to these kinds of assignments, lower-division students should spend class time doing exercises to develop skills. A few suggestions:

• Exercises for audience awareness. Talk through how a particular thesis idea would be developed for a variety of audiences, including a young child. (Asking students to write to a young child often helps them avoid inflated language.)
• Use categorizing/sorting/evaluating exercises , including manipulatives, to help students visualize the logic of the written word.
• Practice writing thesis statements as a class or in small groups.
• Develop dialogue or role-play parts to develop skills in argument/counterargument.

Whatever assignments an instructor ultimately decides to use in the classroom, his/her assignment sheets should always:

• be presented in both written and oral format to accommodate different learning styles;
• include educational objectives and tie those objectives to assignment specifics;
• pay direct attention to rhetorical elements.

COURSE LOGISTICS

The task of designing a lower-division course that all freshman students will take is indeed daunting. Given the UWRP's experience with just a segment of that population, the committee raised the following questions. Some, it answered. Others remain to be pondered.

• The committee understands that students will not be able to test out of the new course. Consequently, the range of student abilities in the courses will be even broader than it is now. Should CU consider tracking to include separate courses for basic, average, and advanced writers? The committee suggests that CU offer a separate course for advanced students and that students use directed self-placement to find their fit. (A course in basic writing could also adopt a directed self-placement approach, but questions of pedagogy and accreditation make the committee question such a course.) Directed self-placement, which asks students to place themselves into the appropriate course based on their reactions to course descriptions and their responses to a series of questions, has been used effectively in many writing programs, and seems promising for use at CU. (See Royer, Daniel and Roger Gillis, "Directed Self-Placement," CCC 50, pp. 54-70.)
• Distinctions between current UWRP courses sometimes blur. For example, the committee looked at papers from both UWRP 1150 and UWRP 1250 classes and, while the writing is generally stronger in UWRP 1250, the assignments are not markedly different. Likewise, while upper-division courses seem to offer instructors more leeway in assignments and are topic-driven, there are not yet clearly distinct outcomes goals for the two kinds of courses. The committee would like to see clearly stated outcomes that differentiate lower- and upper-division courses. As to the distinction between UWRP 1150 and UWRP 1250, it imagines UWRP 1250 as a course that spends less time on surface features and that demands more (and more difficult) reading and more sophisticated writing assignments. Perhaps UWRP 1250 could build a solid bridge to upper-division courses for advanced students by using a "mini-topics" approach.
• Finally, the committee asked how CU's writing program can best train new instructors. This discussion warrants a separate section of this report.

TEACHER TRAINING AND SUPPORT

The UWRP is to be admired for its commitment to teacher training. Each fall, it requires new teachers to attend a two-week training session during which they experience the workshop approach to writing education as they revise their own work. Such training is invaluable on several levels: teachers become familiar with the workshop approach; they hone their own skills; they often experience some of the frustrations that their students will soon face, and so can empathize with students' efforts. But the UWRP training often neglects practical issues, such as classroom logistics and program protocol. And although the UWRP faculty can offer tremendous support and information to each other, new teachers often feel unconnected to this support system. The outcomes committee offered many suggestions for teacher training, both for the UWRP to consider immediately and for CU writing programs to consider in the future.

• Provide the pedagogical background of the program and expected outcomes for each of its courses.
• Encourage faculty to read in the field of composition theory and research, perhaps by including some key texts in training sessions..
• Maintain a significant portion of training as a model workshop. Include typical student papers (which present problems that teachers' papers do not exhibit) in the mix.
• Ask trainees to role-play so that they experience both student and teacher roles during training.
• Require new teachers to observe several experienced teachers in the classroom.
• Provide some portion of training that is specific to the course(s) that trainees will teach.
• Provide practical information for facing a classroom: sample assignments and papers; sample syllabi; detailed workshop logistics; advice for the first class period.
• Establish grading standards and procedures by developing grading rubrics and encouraging informal grading sessions with colleagues.
• Explain program identity and introduce key personnel (administrative assistants, ombudsman, lab tutors, etc.). Explain program activities such as outcomes assessment, program review, etc.
• Train new teachers on available technologies.
• Explain administrative information-pay schedules, benefits, bus pass, human resource issues, etc.
• Develop training for mentors.
• Work to build community within the program through regular department meetings, support for "brown bags" and both formal and informal social gatherings.

CONCLUSION

The UWRP outcomes assessment committee members appreciate the opportunity to talk about these important lower-division composition issues, and hope their input will be helpful as CU discusses redesign of this curriculum. The 2001 UWRP outcomes assessment, focused on upper-division Arts and Sciences courses, will take a similar approach toward curriculum assessment.

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Last updated October 31, 2000