Friday, February 18, 2005
Private Writing -
What's on my mind today? Is there anything in the way of my writing? No, not really. I am completely free to write and think this morning; I'm lucky that way. In class this morning, I commented on how fast the weeks fly by, and one of my students said, "maybe for you, you're getting paid for this." This is true, and it makes me one of the luckiest guys / people in the world.
Frank is worried about his Math class; I'm worried about my stats class -- we have parallels, we are both students afterall. I'm sure Frank will do fine in his math class. I'll do fine with stats.
I've been thinking about this topic paper I have to write. I'm not really used to writing this sort of paper . . . am I? Hmmm. I think in writing essays about literature, I know what to do, some sort of analysis, and if I'm asked to write a paper for a comp/rhet class, then I suppose I pick an issue, find a stance, develop that stance, and write the essay. With EdREM 6709, I have to write an essay that deals with some issue surrounding psychological testing or assessment. My topic deals with assessment, writing assessment, and more specifically, portfolio assessment. I'm not quite sure if I want to focus on large-scale assessment, as it relates to placement or outcomes assessment, or small-scale, using portfolios in individual classroom assessment?
If I choose to focus on large-scale assessment, I can use SWIC's 005/006 portfolio assessment procedures as an example, and maybe get some data about inter-scorer reliability from Tom, or if I focus on large-scale writing outcomes assessment, I can use my experiences with the writing focus group, and the numbers and stats that we collected and Keven collected as a resource.
The Ed White article would provide a good intro to an essay such as that because he outlines the beginning seeds of such large-scale assessment procedures.
In his essay, it is just English/Comp teachers that are responsible for reading and assessing student writing, but in our case, we used faculty in general, which, on the plus side, gets people from outside the discipline thinking and talking about writing, but it's probably not best for reliability, or inter-scorer consistency. I guess you have to weigh the objective, and in our case, the objective was to develop a system for writing outcomes assessment. I'm not sure of the politics that were involved in our situation, but there must have been some resistance, because otherwise, why wouldn't, or didn't the English department take this burden on themselves?
Had we, as a department, set about the task of developing a system of measuring writing competencies, we may have had better results, or more reliable, and, I would assume, valid, results. I wonder what the rationale was for making the process inter-disciplinary? I think college-wide involvement probably had a large role to play.
At any rate, White's article would be a good place to start an essay such as that.
What's on my mind today? Is there anything in the way of my writing? No, not really. I am completely free to write and think this morning; I'm lucky that way. In class this morning, I commented on how fast the weeks fly by, and one of my students said, "maybe for you, you're getting paid for this." This is true, and it makes me one of the luckiest guys / people in the world.
Frank is worried about his Math class; I'm worried about my stats class -- we have parallels, we are both students afterall. I'm sure Frank will do fine in his math class. I'll do fine with stats.
I've been thinking about this topic paper I have to write. I'm not really used to writing this sort of paper . . . am I? Hmmm. I think in writing essays about literature, I know what to do, some sort of analysis, and if I'm asked to write a paper for a comp/rhet class, then I suppose I pick an issue, find a stance, develop that stance, and write the essay. With EdREM 6709, I have to write an essay that deals with some issue surrounding psychological testing or assessment. My topic deals with assessment, writing assessment, and more specifically, portfolio assessment. I'm not quite sure if I want to focus on large-scale assessment, as it relates to placement or outcomes assessment, or small-scale, using portfolios in individual classroom assessment?
If I choose to focus on large-scale assessment, I can use SWIC's 005/006 portfolio assessment procedures as an example, and maybe get some data about inter-scorer reliability from Tom, or if I focus on large-scale writing outcomes assessment, I can use my experiences with the writing focus group, and the numbers and stats that we collected and Keven collected as a resource.
The Ed White article would provide a good intro to an essay such as that because he outlines the beginning seeds of such large-scale assessment procedures.
In his essay, it is just English/Comp teachers that are responsible for reading and assessing student writing, but in our case, we used faculty in general, which, on the plus side, gets people from outside the discipline thinking and talking about writing, but it's probably not best for reliability, or inter-scorer consistency. I guess you have to weigh the objective, and in our case, the objective was to develop a system for writing outcomes assessment. I'm not sure of the politics that were involved in our situation, but there must have been some resistance, because otherwise, why wouldn't, or didn't the English department take this burden on themselves?
Had we, as a department, set about the task of developing a system of measuring writing competencies, we may have had better results, or more reliable, and, I would assume, valid, results. I wonder what the rationale was for making the process inter-disciplinary? I think college-wide involvement probably had a large role to play.
At any rate, White's article would be a good place to start an essay such as that.
