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My theory of program assessment is informed by my participation in the University of Maine's English 101 portfolio assessment process, a study I conducted on readers' values for the reflective writing that students complete for the assessment, my experience as a TA for Florida State University, and assignments that I have completed for Writing Assessment in the Age of Digital Technologies.

 

UMaine's FYC program is drastically different from FSU's program in a number of ways:

 

  • UM's FYC courses operate with a set of standardized outcomes and, though FSU's FYC syllabi sometimes list the WPA outcomes, consistent outcomes are not used,

 

 

  • UM's FYC courses use portfolio assessment in which teachers read other teachers' students' portfolios; FSU does not have a standardized assessment process,

 

 

  • Many UM FYC courses use the same text, though it isn't required; all FSU FYC courses use the same required texts,

 

 

  • UM has three standardized documents scaffolding the assessment process; FSU FYC has several different "strands" of assignments that teachers can choose to use or revise,

 

 

  • UM teaches only academic and reflective writing; FSU teaches a number of genres, encourages multimodal assignments, and the use of digital technologies.

 

 

Though I do see the standardized documents used at UM as potentially limiting students' understanding of writing as a construct (see: Validity Analysis in the right-hand column), I also believe that shared outcomes are crucial for unifying a program so that students in different courses are gaining similar skill sets and knowledge about composing and composing practices.

 

 

Timeline of Research on the Use of Rubrics in Portfolio Assessments

Ideally, I would incorporate FSU's focus on multimodal, multi-genre, and digital texts into an assessment process similar--but not identical--to UM's. This incorporation would necessitate the use of ePortfolios, a change that would significantly impact the assessment documents and processes, especially if students are encouraged to create "web-sensible" ePortfolios (Yancey 26).

 

I believe, along with Huot, Broad, and many others, that teachers should work together in the local context to establish program outcomes (see above: Timeline of Rubrics) especially if ePortfolios are to be used as a method of assessment. ePortfolios require different assessment processes from their print cousins, and Yancey, McElroy, and Powers's recent work on ePortfolio assessment suggests that we have not yet arrived at a definite approach to these texts. However, the authors do provide three activities in which readers should engage as a way of coming to understand the text/s' various possibilities:

 

    1. viewing/reading, a process in which readers engage with the text for the purpose of reading, not assessing;

 

    2. mapping representations, a process in which readers (and, potentially, students) construct maps of the ePortfolio and various relationships

    among its parts; and     

 

    3. spatial, embodied and collective pin-up reading, a process in which readers print all     components of the ePortfolio and pin it up a way of  

    seeing the ePortfolio as a whole (24).

 

Not only is it important for teachers to gather regularly to discuss their values, the program's values, and their actual classroom practices (as Hamp-Lyons and Condon suggest), it's also important that teachers have these discussions with their students. Rather than imposing a standardized rubric on all FYC courses, teachers should engage with their students in the process of inquiry outlined above. If teachers incorporate these practices into their classrooms, they have the ability to use ePortfolio assessment both accurately and appropriately.

 

For an extended discussion on academic and reflective writing in UMaine's portfolio assessment, see my blog post entitled "Opening Reflective Spaces in Writing Assessments."

 

For a focused discussion on writing constructs in writing assessment, see "Writing Assessments and Constructs of Writing."

 

For reflections on expanding the definition of the "local," see "Assessing Students as Individuals or Generalized Construct: Re-Imagining the Local."

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