Pedagogy 8 (3): 2008

Using Assessment to Introduce Incremental Change, Lynne Rhodes, USCA

I have and do still encounter particular kinds of resistance; some faculty will never see assessment as a worthwhile and / or scholarly activity; others will actively resist the expansion of the assessments. My personal feeling is that participation should be voluntary, never coerced, although I do try to enhance and attract faculty by providing incentives and stipends and real / tangible rewards. For instance, faculty who read and evaluate Junior Writing Portfolios do receive payments that have been increased over the past several years, and I’ve been able to appeal to junior faculty in particular by urging these faculty to accept payments as additional travel funds. Since junior faculty have to build a tenure and promotion file through conference presentations, and because our institutional funding is quite limited, the additional travel monies are quite attractive to faculty across the campus. Currently, in addition to English department faculty, evaluators have come from other departments in the humanities and from the School of Education. Faculty who engage in the process generally come to a fuller understanding of student writing; however, occasionally faculty members who attempt to evaluate the immense variety of student work cannot overcome particular ways of knowing and disciplinary biases. I’ve had faculty who tell me that they simply cannot evaluate student writing that doesn’t have a distinct thesis, that they cannot make a judgment about writing in chemistry, biology, and other disciplines where lab-oriented, inductively organized writing is the norm. Other faculty – particularly English literature experts – share their concerns about business-oriented genres, especially since most business papers in the portfolios lack the kinds of source documentation that humanities instructors prefer.

Other kinds of resistance that I regularly encounter deal with what some instructors view as intrusions into their class expectations. In particular, with the Freshman Folder assessments, a few of my colleagues have resisted sharing their students’ work because collecting the papers does require a certain amount of their time, to make copies and to organize the work for the Freshman Folders. Because we have also begun to request that instructors in first year composition also ask for some pre / post assessments of student reading skills, I am beginning to realize that there is a tipping point, beyond which I probably cannot intrude into other classrooms, and that some instructors will tolerate assessments to a point, not to be pushed.

Regularly refreshing myself with sourcebooks such as the Allyn & Bacon collection (2002) and keeping up with research published in various journals are also essential. When called upon to defend or explain any of the particulars of my own institutional assessment practices, being able to contextualize our local situation in a broader, more historical or social context has been invaluable. Being able to assert that I have researched various other possibilities for setting up writing assessments and have relied on effectively implemented programs at institutions such as WSU has been a persuasive argument over and again, when students, faculty, or staff have asked “why” concerning our assessment practices. Being aware of the perspectives of various stakeholders has allowed me to take a long view while dealing with those who are possibly critical of changes while understanding that sometimes those who are critical just need to be more involved with the processes of guiding and coordinating our program.