1. Assessment History
Since 2013 the department has performed ongoing assessment of RWS 100 & 200 comprised of
Internal, department-driven, self-assessment projects, as well as College-wide GE assessment projects.
Meetings with faculty to discuss assessment results and plan revisions to assignment sequences and learning outcomes.
Drafting and piloting of new assignment sequences created by faculty
Implementation of revised assignment sequences and learning outcomes.
An ongoing cycle of curricular assessment, review, discussion, and revision.
A trip down memory lane…

2. Assessment History
We began the assessment cycle with faculty meetings in spring Semester 2013 to create & test rubrics assessing Communication and Critical Thinking goals.
In Summer 2013 we participated in an assessment project initiated by CAL to assess student performance in relation to the different GE goals The Communication and Critical Thinking Rubric was applied to 2 sets of final RWS 100 and RWS papers to measure how well students were achieving basic SLOs and CCT goals.
This was followed by an internal, department-driven assessment project in fall 2013 conducted by Glen McClish and students in his RWS 640 class. Raters examined 62 RWS 100 & 200 papers.

3. Assessment Results
Both assessment projects converged around several key findings:
Results for both RWS100 and RWS200 indicated we were doing a particularly good job with outcomes related to Goal 1 (“crafting well-reasoned arguments for specific audiences.”)
Goals 2 and 3 (“Analyze a variety of texts commonly encountered in the academic setting,” and “situate discourse within social, generic, cultural, and historic contexts”) were generally being met successfully, although goal three was not quite at the level expected in the RWS200 papers.
The goal least successfully addressed in our samples was 4 (“Assess the relative strengths of arguments and supporting evidence”). We reviewed our assignments and student learning outcomes and concluded that this goal was not adequately featured.

4. Assessment Results
At our fall faculty conference in August 2013 we met to discuss ways of revising learning outcomes, assignment descriptions, and corresponding pedagogy. Faculty suggested changes to the assignment sequence and drafted new sample assignments that we piloted.  
Impetus for revisions came from assessment projects, but it also came out of conversations with experienced teachers before and during this period, who suggested revisions to 100 and 200.
Changes to the assignment sequence are shown in the handout.

5. Assessment Results
In fall 2013 and spring 2014 we piloted these changes in sections of RWS100 and RWS200.
We then participated in a large assessment project organized by the College of Arts and Letters. We collected 316 randomly selected papers from RWS100 and RWS200, and in May 2014 conducted a four-day long rubric-based evaluation of student work.
SUZANNE LED THIS

6. GE Assessment & Revisions to the Assignment Sequence in RWS100/200
Results?
RWS faculty found innovative, creative and effective ways of implementing the revised assignment sequence and outcomes
We did a good job of meeting goal #4, and also saw good results with other goals.

9. Assessment Results
But…while the GE rubric is useful, and helped get the assessment projects moving, it did lack specificity with regard to evaluation. We wanted to know more about how our students were evaluating arguments.
So we created a new, more focused, fine- grained rubric designed to “dive deep” into evaluation, and set a higher bar for student writing.
This new rubric is shown on page 4 of the handout

10. Assessment Results Summer 2015 assessment project of RWS200
Student papers were collected from assignments 2 and 4 in RWS200. Assignment 2 (the “lens” assignment), was examined as this was part of the new assignment sequence we had piloted, and an evaluative component had been added to it. We also examined assignment 4, where evaluation was now central.
Random papers were collected from TAs teaching RWS200 (30 papers for assignment 2, and 42 for assignment 4). “We” (Jamie) ran a norming session, selected anchor texts, and assessed the papers. The results are shown below:

11. Assessment Results Summer 2015 assessment project of RWS200
Students writing in unit 2 is promising. Evaluation is still fairly new, accomplished through the lens of another text, and just under 50% are proficient or advanced.

12. Assessment Results
Evaluation in assignment 4 was not as strong as we’d hoped - although still much good analysis and evaluation (45% proficient or advanced).
It may be we have set the bar very high – assignment 4 asks students to synthesize, evaluate, advance and support their own argument. Raters looked for all of these elements to be strong in order for the paper to qualify as “advanced.”
The new rubric does valuable work breaking down the elements of evaluation. We want to continue this so we can see more clearly where students, and our teaching materials, are succeeding, and where they are not.

13. Assessment Results
The results suggest for RWS200 we may need to do more to link units 3 and 4, so assignment 4 is more an extension of assignment 3, and students have plenty of time to develop evaluation. So work on “bridging assignments” and texts that are connected.
Perhaps further refine the rubric and our scoring of it, so evaluative criteria and disaggregated. We may also wish to focus more closely on a single assignment.
Next steps: work to set up a new round of conversations about assessment. Discuss ways of revising, piloting and refining our curriculum.

14. Questions, comments, suggestions?