How will joining the CSWC benefit writing assessment at my school and nationally?

The CSWC question set may provide data that can be used to proactively shape conversations about writing assessment on their campuses and beyond. Specifically, it may help address several important and timely issues in writing assessment, including accountability, transparency, and comparability. (learn more)

Post-secondary institutions are feeling increasing pressures to assess whether, how, and to what extent students are learning what institutions say they are in their courses and programs. Participation in the CSWC may provide administrators of first-year-writing, WAC, and WID programs with data that can be used to proactively shape conversations about writing assessment on their campuses and beyond.Concerns about assessment are often relayed in words like "accountability," "transparency," and "comparability." Institutions perceive pressures to define and demonstrate achievement of these terms to come primarily from accreditors, stakeholders in the community (like employers and other community members), and sometimes from the federal government. (For a summary of the requirements that post-secondary institutions will need to meet under the Higher Education Act (HEA) [reauthorized in August 2008], see the American Council for Education's summary of the HEA.)

While some faculty and administrators believe that these pressures push colleges and universities to undertake specific assessments in specific ways, the reality is that there is latitude within the provisions of the HEA and the requirements of accrediting agencies for institutions to proactively define the terms under which they are assessed. The HEA states that "an institution sets its own specific standards and measures consistent with its mission and within the larger framework of the accreditation standards. In consultation with institutions, accreditors set common standards that are used to review all of the institutions they accredit. The act forbids ED from establishing criteria that specify, define or prescribe the standards accreditors use in assessing an institution’s success with respect to student achievement." The act also "requires accreditors to apply standards that respect the stated mission of institutions, including religious missions" (ACE, 2-3).

The CSWC can provide institutions with data that reinforce the principle (outlined, for instance, in the NCTE-WPA White Paper on Assessment) that good assessment is locally based, grounded in the principles of the discipline, and used to improve teaching and learning at the local level. Questions about writing practices reflect principles and practices of the discipline and have been crafted with input from over 70 professors with expertise in writing-program administration, writing across the curriculum, and writing in the disciplines, who developed over 100 questions in July 2007. These questions were then collapsed, refined, focus-group tested, and finalized by a smaller team.

Participation in the CSWC may be especially helpful for engaging campus administrators in conversations about "comparability." Currently, standards for some measures of comparability exist (e.g., progress toward degree, financial aid awarded, etc.). Information to determine comparability on these measures often comes from the Integrated Post-Secondary Education Data System (IPEDS); other information comes from the institution itself.

However, no standards exist for comparability on discipline-specific measures, such as "writing success." This creates an opportunity to proactively shape those standards. Participation in the CSWC will provide campuses with information that can help determine those standards in ways appropriate to the discipline. For instance, campuses can compare themselves to writing programs with similar emphases, campuses that assign similar amounts of writing, campuses whose results are similar, etc. Having at hand this kind of nuanced information can help institutions engage in meaningful comparisons that may be used to improve practices.