Barry Maid’s Group

• Used locally
• Marquette U
• Need to describe goals of program: tweaked & distributed to deans, part-time faculty, etc. Very favorable response
• Administrators screaming outcomes
• Creates common vocabulary for people across the disciplines
• This isn’t me - developed across the country
• Used in WAC workshops & test what they are doing against these outcomes
• Used in assessment?
• No multiple choice questions
• Protection against assessors
• i.e. This is what needs to be assessed - critique assessment tools that are not

• Used globally
• Shore up standards for high school teachers
• What might be happening in classes
• Affect high school & later writing courses
• Outcomes, not end points
• Publishers’ guidelines for authors--benchmarks
• Articulation with community colleges
• Work with accrediting agencies
• Accreditation of writing programs by WPA (possible in future)
• Dissemination to Deans & Provosts meetings
• Broader base of WPA (80% of Colleges & Universities do not have membership in WPA)--figure is wrong--Ed White estimates 50%

Chet Pryor’s Group

Helps foster departmental/local control

Hedge against state committees, etc.

• To build common understandings with other groups
• Acclimatizing groups with similar goals & understanding between different audiences
• Articulating between colleges, and between secondary & colleges
• Distinguishing entrance requirements vs exit requirements
• Pragmatics
• Director of comp uses them to help adjunct pool write syllabi
• Faculty develop syllabi by putting outcomes against text

• Self study for accreditation
• Syllabus writing
• Used to reinforce what one WPA had already argued for: to Edge current traditionalists into broader concept of writing
• Offers language for other documents
• Define program in a writing program
• Point of discussion for faculty workshops and TA training
• Could be filtered in slowly
• Link on web page
• Link to official WPA web page
• Others outside field should know about this document

• Dangers:
• Reaction against outsiders meddling
• Questions of assessment
• Portfolios are obvious answers
• Taking parts out of context
• Question of publishing outcomes in course catalog
• Document must be used at local group’s discretion
• especially appropriating & changing the verbs
• Boards of Regents

Mark Wiley’s Group

• Will add coherence to own comp programs
• Will be used Train own faculty
• Especially literature faculty - ground FYC in rhetoric
• Articulate with 2 year colleges
• Describe course to students
• Richer & deeper than high schools
• Talk to faculty in other disciplines
• WAC building on 1^st year programs
• Common vocabulary
• Criteria for evaluating AP and dual-credit courses
• Problems
• get rid of "Genre"

• Attitudes gone from statement
• i.e. students may end up still no liking to think or write
• Adaptable to methodologies
• Make explicit what is already implicit

• Questions
• Are we free to own this document?
• Do critical thinking outcomes really reflect "critical thinking"?
• "Forbidding professional document"
• May need companion document for students’ parents
• How to move to your own assessment vehicle
• Process of creating assessment criteria & program evaluation in practice
• Need addendum for local uses: strategies

Linda Bergmann

- Review of Session #1
 

• History: outcomes statement has been written & rewritten in open forums & workshops over 2 years at CCCC & WPA
• Assessment: Ed White says assess yourself or you will be assessed
• Outcomes vs standards: Kathleen Yancey
• Summary of small groups discussions - 2 questions

- Assessment - makes explicit what was already implicit

• Fosters departmental control over programs
• Bulwark against state legislatures & committees
• Can be customized to local assessment vehicles
• Hard to turn into multiple choice test or 30 minute essay
• Portfolios
• Global issues

- Articulating with accreditation

- Accreditation of working programs by WPA or elsewhere

- Bringing in other US Universities to WPA
 

Mark Wiley’s Group
Question # 1: Supporting Documents

1. Difference between standards & outcomes
- Must all students do all things? How much? One semester vs 2 semester programs?
2. How writing develops & diversifies
- Idea that students continue to develop after FYC
3. Genre--get rid of term
4. Rubric - what would rubric look like?

These outcomes differ from current California writing assessment rubric

Question #3:  Misinterpretations
- Idea that everyone has to achieve this in first year

Mark’s account:

My group felt we needed a separate subhead to clarify the standards versus the outcomes distinction and not bury that discussion in the middle of a paragraph. They felt "genre" was too controversial/vague and would cause more confusion and should either be reworded or deleted

and replaced with language that got at the same idea but did not use that term.

A few wondered if the outcomes were intended to be achieved in a single semester course. So we would need to talk about adapting them to fit specific programs. Some also felt we might need to supply a sample rubric to demonstrate how these outcomes might be evaluated.

They also wanted the document to explain more thoroughly how writing development occurs and why it is not possible to achieve these outcomes completely in the first year. They wanted to avoid someone misinterpreting that these outcomes would be achieved by all students after their first-year composition course.
 

Keith Rhodes’ Group: Question 2: What kinds of contexts?

• From whom - to whom: From WPA - but try to get other, broader organizations to broadcast it? (ADE)
• Form and apparatus?
• Book?
• Campaign?
• Sequences? How to get work out? What is Chet going to do next?
• Rollout
• Defenses?
• Should there be an official spokesperson?
• Amendment? - Living, breathing document
• What about technology?
• What amendment process? Who should be responsible?
• If only 20% of organizations belong to WPA, document will start to expand WPA membership

Chet Pryor’s Group: Question #2-- Rubrics

• Exemplum rubrics
• Articulating writing programs and dual enrollment programs
• Articulating with high schools
• Local outcomes of institution

 Exempli for specific outcomes

• Website as context

Irv Peckham’s Group:
Question 3: Misinterpretations

• Built-in change
• Individuals using it for own nefarious purposes
• Defenses?
• Disseminating to ADE & other forums
• Administrators are going to LOVE it
• Disseminate it effectively
• How to bring it to the high schools?
• Inservice training days
• Bringing it personally & informally into high school teachers’ hands
• Avoiding module cutting (i.e. cutting out modules that posit writing as intellectual inquiry
• Maybe use 2 sections to discourage cutting and picking :
• I Students (1 2 3 4)
• II Teachers (1 2 3 4)
• Mandate WPA to appoint committee every 3 years for revision
• Publish it in WPA Journal asking for revision
• "Outcomes 98"--Bill Gates model
• Irv wants to re-work it for high school teachers & run it by us

Kathleen Blake Yancey’s group: Question 4: Review Process
 

• Is this something WPA Consultant Evaluation might use?
• NCTE Workload doc (not reviewed regularly)
• Cyclical review: Potential problem: that it will just get longer
• Balance between stability & change
• Technology & document design/graphics missing
• Index of how people have used it, what changes, how local departments have used it:
• generate lore that makes it real.
• Check list of what needs to be added/reviewed: Running tab
• look at it again--3 years recommended
• Potential problem of control: want it problematized in a forum other than the web site
Use website to generate lore-- have readers e-mail stories & documents to review at committee address; the committee could then archive this material and select useful responses and examples for regularly-published digests (every 6 month or so). This would both disseminate useful information and provide a full archive for 3rd year reviews.

Return to Main menu; return to Outcomes History