Valley Writing Workshop

2013 – 2014 Valley Writing Workshop: Assessing Student Writing and Writing Intensive Courses
(Mankato, MN) – December 17 and 18, 2013; May 13, 2014

Tuesday, December 17, 2013. 8:30 am – 4:30 pm. Planned writing activities, writing assignments, and writing-intensive courses.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013. 8:30 am – 4:30 pm. Developed the course or assignment. Set up an assessment.

Spring 2014 semester: Implemented the writing assignment(s).

Tuesday, May 13, 2013. 9:00 am – 3:00 pm. Shared experience, analyzed data, and reflected on the project.

Faculty from around the university gathered to focus on issues related to improving student writing, teaching writing-intensive courses, and sustaining the professional writing of the faculty at MSU Mankato.  The primary belief was that every one of us is a writing teacher. Here is the 222-Autobio-Assignment-VWW13 that I developed and implemented during this workshop.

2013-14 Valley Writing Workshop participants

As we came together for the 34th annual Valley Writing Workshop, we were thinking about the assessment activities that were buzzing around campus. Assessment is never easy, but we know what it looks like in courses where projects and outcomes can be neatly quantified, tabulated, and formatted into charts. Assessing writing intensive courses can seem confusing and overwhelming. For one thing, writing doesn’t always look the same in different programs and colleges. For another, many of us wonder if it’s possible to quantify writing…and if it’s even worth the bother.

At this year’s Valley Writing Workshop, we discussed and planned how to assess student writing and writing intensive courses. We considered these questions:

  1. What does “writing” look like in your program or in the careers that students in your program seek?
  2. How do you create writing activities and assignments that engage students in the act of writing?
  3. How can we help students improve their writing in their fields of study?
  4. How do you give constructive feedback on writing while maintaining time for everything else you have to do?
  5. How do you ensure that your assessment of student writing is consistent between students and across multiple sections of a course?
  6. Can we use rubrics to assess student writing? Should we even try?
  7. Since we have all this data, can we develop it into a publication?