Fall 2008
All Faculty will:
* Have students complete Pre-Writing Inventory by
September 5
* Submit syllabi by September 17 (Guiding
Question: What are the philosophies of writing that shape our
FYW classes?)
* Have students complete Post-Writing Inventory by the end
of Finals Week
* Submit writing assignment guidelines and portfolio guidelines (if
applicable) by December 3 (Guiding
Question: What are the opportunities for composing that we
offer to our FY writers?)
For Assessment Seminar:
A self-selected/volunteer cohort will guide the model for Spring
2009 faculty workshops. 5-7 faculty members will submit three
student “portfolios” (for now, this means any simple and general
collection of student work that spans the whole semester) that
represent the following defined range (choose one writer for each
category):
1) Struggling Writer: This is a student who seems to
have really struggled with his writing throughout the entire
semester and maybe even teeter-tottered---in your mind or in
reality--- on failing the class (this is NOT a student who rarely
showed up, etc). “Struggling” should not be used as a new code word
for the continual ”othering” of “LST” students or as a simplistic
marker for issues involving surface-level correctness.
2) Emerging Writer: This is a student who may have
struggled at various points in the semester but who showed
significant growth. “Emerging” here does not mean “developmental”
or “developing” but refers rather to a newly “self-actualized”
writer in the sense that the student has self-identified a
transformation in attitude, disposition, skill, or craft toward/in
writing over the course of the semester.
3) Excelling Writer: This is a student who seemed to
consistently excel across all writing activities/genres and
challenged herself continually. This is NOT a student who just
“skated” through the semester but someone who really pushed
herself, peers, the boundaries of our assignments, and/or our own
teaching.
Faculty who will show student work in the fall will need to get
permission from students. This work will go on the shared drive.
Beginning in the Spring of 2009, a new IRB proposal will be
submitted that officially explains to students what their work will
be used for (for faculty teaching improvement only) and where, how,
and how long it will be stored.
The goal for this year is to see, hear, and learn from our
students by looking closely at their writing. Here are some sample
guiding questions: What does the writing from our struggling
students in FYW at St. John’s tell us? How do students define their
growth and change in a semester? What do our excelling writers
do?
Spring 2009
All faculty will:
* Have students complete Pre-Writing Survey by January
30
* Submit syllabi by February 4. For this
syllabus, every faculty member should translate the Program
Learning Objectives SPECIFICALLY to their courses, using April
Sikorski’s syllabus as a model. This can be found on our shared
network drive.
* Have students complete Post-Writing Survey by the end of Finals
Week
For Assessment Seminar:
All faculty will submit three student “portfolios” per class (9
in total for those teaching three 1000c courses). For now, a
portfolio means any simple and general collection of student work
that spans the whole semester (it does not need to include
reflection letters, etc. in spring 2009). For spring 2009, faculty
can simply collect students’ work or have students construct
official portfolios (choose three writers for each category):
1) Struggling Writer: This is a student who seems to
have really struggled with his writing throughout the entire
semester and maybe even teeter-tottered---in your mind or in
reality--- on failing the class (this is NOT a student who rarely
showed up, etc). “Struggling” should not be used as a new code word
for the continual ”othering” of “LST” students or as a simplistic
marker for surface-level correctness.
2) Emerging Writer: This is a student who may have
struggled at various points in the semester but who showed
significant growth. “Emerging” here does not mean “developmental”
or “developing” but refers rather to a newly “self-actualized”
writer in the sense that the student has self-identified a
transformation in attitude, disposition, skill, or craft toward/in
writing over the course of the semester.
3) Excelling Writer: This is a student who seemed to
consistently excel across all writing activities/genres and
challenged herself continually. This is NOT a student who just
“skated” through the semester but someone who really pushed
herself, peers, the boundaries of our assignments, and/or our own
teaching.
Ideally, we will create a final “report” in the spring,
available to stakeholders and administrators about our qualitative
analyses of student work as a way for us to control and define a
discourse on what student writing in the first year looks like at
St. John’s. For the 2009-2010 school year, we will focus on a new
set of questions and issues about student work that is collectively
decided.
For spring 2009, students will give permission based on the new
IRB proposal that will hopefully be passed by that point in the
semester. Faculty will only archive nine students’ writing for now
which will all be coded on the shared drive (and only available to
tenure-track faculty). We will move to full collections of all
1000c student work as we deem it necessary. These student writings
will be used for the sole, expressed purpose of faculty
professional development. Any faculty member who wants to write
about/research students’ writing will have to secure their own IRB
approval and student permissions (and faculty permissions if
writing about someone else’s classes).