First Year Writing Program Assessment At Small Liberal Arts Colleges

This project examines first-year writing program assessment practices at small liberal arts colleges and universities in an effort to understand how these practices resemble or diverge from prevailing scholarship on writing program assessment. There is extensive literature on best practices in writing program assessment, but nearly all of it by scholars and researchers working at public comprehensive universities who assume that type of institution as their model. At the same time, scholarship on writing program assessment at small liberal arts institutions is scant, amounting to fewer than ten publications in the last twenty years, even as these schools are structurally and philosophically different enough from public comprehensive universities that prevailing best program assessment practices often do not fit their contexts and needs. Small liberal arts universities are historically important to higher education in United States, remain numerically significant, and serve hundreds of thousands of students per year. To better understand how they engage with bet practices in writing program assessment, the author distributed a survey to more than 120 institutions, ultimately receiving responses from 42. Using these responses and in-depth interviews with the directors of first-year writing programs at three other small liberal arts universities, the author tested his hypothesis that these schools are either not engaging in writing program assessment or are not doing so in ways that are consistent with best practices. The combined results ultimately reveal that (1) the responding schools are shifting, including in their approaches to first-year writing and in their assessment of those programs; (2) many assessment projects show signs of interference from upper-level administrators; and (3) these institutions are engaging in writing program assessment, but often in ways that are out of line with prevailing scholarship. The study examines the possible reasons for these themes, makes suggestions for how the directors of first-year writing programs at small institutions can gain better control of and improve their program assessment efforts and for how program assessment scholars might consider the small liberal arts experience, and closes with suggestions for further research.

WRITING PROGRAM ADMINISTRATION AT SMALL LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGES presents an empirical study of the writing programs at one hundred small, private liberal arts colleges. Jill M. Gladstein and Dara Rossman Regaignon provide detailed information about a type of writing program not often highlighted in the scholarly record and offer a model for such national, multi-institutional research.

Winner of the 2015 CPTSC Award for Excellence in Program Assessment Written for those who design, redesign, and assess writing programs, Very Like a Whale is an intensive discussion of writing program assessment issues. Taking its title from Hamlet, the book explores the multifaceted forces that shape writing programs and the central role these programs can and should play in defining college education. Given the new era of assessment in higher education, writing programs must provide valid evidence that they are serving students, instructors, administrators, alumni, accreditors, and policymakers. This book introduces new conceptualizations associated with assessment, making them clear and available to those in the profession of rhetoric and composition/writing studies. It also offers strategies that aid in gathering information about the relative success of a writing program in achieving its identified goals. Philosophically and historically aligned with quantitative approaches, White, Elliot, and Peckham use case study and best-practice scholarship to demonstrate the applicability of their innovative approach, termed Design for Assessment (DFA). Well grounded in assessment theory, Very Like a Whale will be of practical use to new and seasoned writing program administrators alike, as well as to any educator involved with the accreditation process.

The field of writing program administration has long been a space rich in metaphor. From plate-twirling to fire-extinguishing, parents to dungeon masters, and much more, the work of a WPA extends to horizons unknown. Responding to the constraints of austerity, Toward More Sustainable Metaphors of Writing Program Administration offers new lenses for established WPAs and provides aspiring and early career WPAs with a sense of the range of responsibilities and opportunities in their academic and professional spaces. This volume presents twelve chapters that reclaim and revise established metaphors; offer new metaphors based on sustainable, relational, or emotional labor practices and phenomena; and reveal the improvisational, artisanal nature of WPA work. Chapters resonate across three sections. The first section focuses on organic relationships captured in phrases like “putting out fires” and "seeing forests for the trees” alongside unexpected comparisons to ground and light. The second describes institutional landscapes featuring generative juxtapositions such as the WPA as a labor activist or a mapper of emotional geography. And the third discusses performance crafts like improv comedy and artisanal making. Toward More Sustainable Metaphors of Writing Program Administration offers new and revised ways of thinking and acting for WPAs, who are constantly negotiating the paradoxical demands of their work and continually striving to act ethically in conflicted, and even fraught, situations. It will inspire practicing, aspiring, and former WPAs working in a time of transformation by highlighting more sustainable ways of enacting WPA identity. Contributors: Jacob Babb, John Belk, Katherine Daily O'Meara, Ryan J. Dippre, Douglas Hesse, Andrew Hollinger, Rona Kaufman, Cynthia D. Mwenja, Manny Piña, Scott Rogers, Robyn Tasaka, Alexis Teagarden, Christy I. Wenger, Lydia Wilkes

This volume, edited by Grace Veach, explores leading approaches to foregrounding information literacy in first-year college writing courses. Chapters describe cross-disciplinary efforts underway across higher education, as well as innovative approaches of both writing professors and librarians in the classroom. This seminal work unpacks the disciplinary implications for information literacy and writing studies as they encounter one another in theory and practice, during a time when "fact" or "truth" is less important than fitting a predetermined message. Topics include reading and writing through the lens of information literacy, curriculum design, specific writing tasks, transfer, and assessment.

Contributors examine the politics of untenured writing program administrator appointments given the demands of writing program administration, and reconciles the tension between WPA position statements and current institutional practice.

Rooted in contemporary understandings of social action, informed by up-to-date research on writing program administration, and attentive to the needs of value-driven decision-making, Burnin’ Daylight enables writing program administrators (WPAs) to shape writing programs that help people create the lives they envision. This book guides WPAs through the rough terrain of running a writing program during a period of sustained social and economic upheaval—and through the process of making their programs more principle-driven and sustainable along the way. WPAs face a range of challenges on a regular basis: organizing class schedules, leading professional learning events, conducting program assessments, responding to student needs, meeting with deans and provosts, and more. Additionally, WPAs need to learn about and direct their programs strategically when considering the kind of program they currently have, the sort of program they envision, and how they can transition from one to another. Burnin’ Daylight acts as a roadmap for IRB-approved research and provides WPAs—specifically, new and returning WPAs—with a detailed yet flexible plan for understanding the inner workings of a writing program and how to develop a future trajectory for it. Burnin’ Daylight is for writing program administrators of all experience levels and other administrators interested in taking a “principled practices” approach to their work.

Noting that present evaluation systems are so limited that they are neither reliable nor valid, this monograph critically reviews studies designed to evaluate composition programs at four major universities. The book offers theoretical and practical guidance through discussion of generalities from the four studies and pertinent questions and guidance to evaluators of composition programs. The first chapter looks at the state of the art of evaluating writing programs, discussing the need for such evaluation, and at two dominant approaches to writing program evaluation. The second chapter discusses a quantitative model of writing program evaluation in terms of four university studies, giving an overview of the dominant quantitative approach. Chapter 3 discusses a framework for evaluating college writing programs, including five components of writing program evaluation, and the final chapter discusses accommodating context and change in writing program evaluation. (HTH)