Advice for Departmental Writing Assessment
The following advice is designed to assist CSUS departments with writing assessment in their major. If your department is currently working on writing assessment and would like assistance, please contact Dan Melzer, University Reading and Writing Coordinator, 151 Calaveras, 278-6925, melzer@csus.edu.
Goals to consider for assessment:
- Evaluating writing
- Collecting information
- Improving teaching
- Creating faculty dialogue about writing
Assessment can include information from:
- Students
- Teachers
- Writing samples
- Observation
Effective assessment is:
- Multi-modal (gathering information from a variety of types of writing)
- Qualitative and quantitative
- Collaborative and democratic
- Regular and systematic
- Short-term and long-term
- Curriculum-driven
Assumptions about writing assessors should be aware of:
- Writing is difficult to measure
- Writing is a process
- Writing requires a rhetorical purpose and audience to be most successful
- Writing skills improve slowly and in recursive pattern
Types of Assessment
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Timed Essay |
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Classroom Assignment |
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Portfolio |
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Ethnographic Research |
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