Organic Writing Assessment
Organic Writing Assessment

Author: Bob Broad

Publisher: Utah State University Press

Published: 2009-09-05

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13: 9780874217308

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Educators strive to create “assessment cultures” in which they integrate evaluation into teaching and learning and match assessment methods with best instructional practice. But how do teachers and administrators discover and negotiate the values that underlie their evaluations? Bob Broad’s 2003 volume, What We Really Value, introduced dynamic criteria mapping (DCM) as a method for eliciting locally-informed, context-sensitive criteria for writing assessments. The impact of DCM on assessment practice is beginning to emerge as more and more writing departments and programs adopt, adapt, or experiment with DCM approaches. For the authors of Organic Writing Assessment, the DCM experience provided not only an authentic assessment of their own programs, but a nuanced language through which they can converse in the always vexing, potentially divisive realm of assessment theory and practice. Of equal interest are the adaptations these writers invented for Broad’s original process, to make DCM even more responsive to local needs and exigencies. Organic Writing Assessment represents an important step in the evolution of writing assessment in higher education. This volume documents the second generation of an assessment model that is regarded as scrupulously consistent with current theory; it shows DCM’s flexibility, and presents an informed discussion of its limits and its potentials.

Organic Writing Assessment
Organic Writing Assessment

Author: Bob Broad

Publisher: University Press of Colorado

Published: 2009-09-01

Total Pages: 175

ISBN-13: 0874217318

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Educators strive to create “assessment cultures” in which they integrate evaluation into teaching and learning and match assessment methods with best instructional practice. But how do teachers and administrators discover and negotiate the values that underlie their evaluations? Bob Broad’s 2003 volume, What We Really Value, introduced dynamic criteria mapping (DCM) as a method for eliciting locally-informed, context-sensitive criteria for writing assessments. The impact of DCM on assessment practice is beginning to emerge as more and more writing departments and programs adopt, adapt, or experiment with DCM approaches. For the authors of Organic Writing Assessment, the DCM experience provided not only an authentic assessment of their own programs, but a nuanced language through which they can converse in the always vexing, potentially divisive realm of assessment theory and practice. Of equal interest are the adaptations these writers invented for Broad’s original process, to make DCM even more responsive to local needs and exigencies. Organic Writing Assessment represents an important step in the evolution of writing assessment in higher education. This volume documents the second generation of an assessment model that is regarded as scrupulously consistent with current theory; it shows DCM’s flexibility, and presents an informed discussion of its limits and its potentials.

An Overview of Writing Assessment
An Overview of Writing Assessment

Author: Willa Wolcott

Publisher:

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780814134900

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Intended for both beginning and experienced teachers at the secondary and college levels as well as teacher educators and assessment teams, this book reviews strengths and weaknesses of the major types of writing assessment, both for large-scale evaluations and for the individual classroom. The book includes: practical examples, applications, and Tips for Teachers sections that suggest ways to integrate assignments organically with pedagogical goals and assessment methods that are viable and--most important--useful to students. Also provided is accessible treatment of complex issues in large-scale and individual writing assessment, e.g., cultural diversity; reliability and validity; writing in content-area courses; implications of having computers conduct assessments; and how teachers can work to make large-scale evaluations as responsive as possible to best practice in the classroom. (NKA)

Guide to College Writing Assessment
Guide to College Writing Assessment

Author: Peggy O'Neill

Publisher: University Press of Colorado

Published: 2009-04-15

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 0874217334

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While most English professionals feel comfortable with language and literacy theories, assessment theories seem more alien. English professionals often don’t have a clear understanding of the key concepts in educational measurement, such as validity and reliability, nor do they understand the statistical formulas associated with psychometrics. But understanding assessment theory—and applying it—by those who are not psychometricians is critical in developing useful, ethical assessments in college writing programs, and in interpreting and using assessment results. A Guide to College Writing Assessment is designed as an introduction and source book for WPAs, department chairs, teachers, and administrators. Always cognizant of the critical components of particular teaching contexts, O’Neill, Moore, and Huot have written sophisticated but accessible chapters on the history, theory, application and background of writing assessment, and they offer a dozen appendices of practical samples and models for a range of common assessment needs. Because there are numerous resources available to assist faculty in assessing the writing of individual students in particular classrooms, A Guide to College Writing Assessment focuses on approaches to the kinds of assessment that typically happen outside of individual classrooms: placement evaluation, exit examination, programmatic assessment, and faculty evaluation. Most of all, the argument of this book is that creating the conditions for meaningful college writing assessment hinges not only on understanding the history and theories informing assessment practice, but also on composition programs availing themselves of the full range of available assessment practices.

Understanding and Creating Digital Texts
Understanding and Creating Digital Texts

Author: Richard Beach

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2014-10-16

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1442228741

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Given the increased use of digital reading and writing tools in the classroom, this book provides secondary and college English language arts teachers with activities and classroom examples for using a range of different digital tools—blogs, wikis, websites, annotations, Twitter, mapping, forum discussions, etc.—to engage students in understanding and creating digital texts. It therefore integrates reading and writing instruction through goal-driven activities supported by uses and affordances of digital tools. This book also provides a framework for designing these activities that encourage students to define purpose and audience, make connections between digital texts and people, collaborate with others, employ alternative modes of communication and gain new perspectives, and constructing identities; practices that are linked to addressing the high school English Language Arts Common Core State Standards. The book also describes ways to use digital tools to support these practices—for example, using digital tools to foster students’ collaborative reading and writing. The book also describes use of digital feedback and e-portfolio tools to foster students’ reflection on their uses of these practices.

Assessing Writing
Assessing Writing

Author: Billie F. Birnie

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2016-07-19

Total Pages: 75

ISBN-13: 1475829507

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This book on assessing writing is designed for teachers, school leaders, and evaluators. It begins with a collection of assessment practices that will increase teachers' efficiency and effectiveness as they guide students in learning how to think and write successfully. The second section includes step-by-step procedures, prompts, and rubrics for conducting on-demand, timed writing assessments, either for diagnosis of students' skills or for analysis of instruction. The final section explains how to develop and measure interrater reliability, the extent to which assessors agree on the quality of student writing-a critical component for any faculty that seeks to increase the efficacy of their teaching. Whether readers wish to assess the thinking and writing of students in one class, one school, or a whole district, this book will show them how.

Teaching Information Literacy and Writing Studies
Teaching Information Literacy and Writing Studies

Author: Grace Veach

Publisher: Purdue University Press

Published: 2018-09-15

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 1612495478

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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.

Creative Writing and Education
Creative Writing and Education

Author: Graeme Harper

Publisher: Multilingual Matters

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 1783093536

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This book explores creative writing and its various relationships to education through a number of short, evocative chapters written by key players in the field. At times controversial, the book presents issues, ideas and pedagogic practices related to creative writing in and around education, with a focus on higher education. The volume aims to give the reader a sense of contemporary thinking and to provide some alternative points of view, offering examples of how those involved feel about the relationship between creative writing and education. Many of the contributors play notable roles in national and international organizations concerned with creative writing and education. The book also includes a Foreword by Philip Gross, who won the 2009 TS Eliot Prize for poetry.

Coming To Terms
Coming To Terms

Author: Patricia Lynne

Publisher: University Press of Colorado

Published: 2004-11-01

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 0874214823

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In a provocative book-length essay, Patricia Lynne argues that most programmatic assessment of student writing in U.S. public and higher education is conceived in the terms of mid-20th century positivism. Since composition as a field had found its most compatible home in constructivism, she asks, why do compositionists import a conceptual frame for assessment that is incompatible with composition theory? By casting this as a clash of paradigms, Lynne is able to highlight the ways in which each theory can and cannot influence the shape of assessment within composition. She laments, as do many in composition, that the objectively oriented paradigm of educational assessment theory subjugates and discounts the very social constructionist principles that empower composition pedagogy. Further, Lynne criticizes recent practice for accommodating the big business of educational testing—especially for capitulating to the discourse of positivism embedded in terms like "validity" and "reliability." These terms and concepts, she argues, have little theoretical significance within composition studies, and their technical and philosophical import are downplayed by composition assessment scholars. There is a need, Lynne says, for terms of assessment that are native to composition. To open this needed discussion within the field, she analyzes cutting-edge assessment efforts, including the work of Broad and Haswell, and she advances a set of alternate terms for evaluating assessment practices, a set of terms grounded in constructivism and composition. Coming to Terms is ambitious and principled, and it takes a controversial stand on important issues. This strong new volume in assessment theory will be of serious interest to assessment specialists and their students, to composition theorists, and to those now mounting assessments in their own programs.

Very Like a Whale
Very Like a Whale

Author: Edward M. White

Publisher: University Press of Colorado

Published: 2015-03-15

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 0874219868

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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.