As most readers of CAC.OPHONY already know, we are in the process of delving into the Writing Diagnostic data that BLSCI has been collecting over the past ten years. My work, as a first-year Writing Fellow, is to help organize and make sense of this data. In order to keep the dialogue about this project ongoing and public, I will be posting periodic updates and I welcome feedback in the form of questions, comments, and suggestions. In this first post, I would like to provide readers with an overview of the data and the project more broadly as well as some initial ideas Mikhail, Suzanne, and I have for analysis.
Starting back in 1997 and ending last spring, fellows at BLSCI have done a tremendous amount of work collecting writing samples from students at Baruch enrolled in Communication Intensive Courses (CICs) across a variety of schools and disciplines. As part of an ongoing assessment of the effectiveness of CIC curricula in improving students’ writing, fellows scored students’ writing samples at the beginning and end of each semester. Specifically, fellows scored each writing sample in terms of students’ expectations for the class (i.e., development, tenor, and range of expectations) as well as the quality of their writing (i.e., ideas and development, organization and coherence, spelling and vocabulary, syntax and punctuation, and grammar).
We are currently in the processes of organizing and cleaning the data. So far, we have data from 1,395 CICs and 31,408 students entered into electronic format and (almost) ready for analysis. These data are primarily from 2000 - 2006, so we can expect the size of the sample to almost double when we are finished entering the early data and as fellows continue to enter remaining diagnostic data.
I can honestly say that I have not yet had the pleasure of working with such an extensive and impressive sample, despite having been a part of several large-scale research and assessment projects. The data are very exciting, because of the many lines of analysis we can potentially follow. For example, we have the ability to look across all of the students’ work to see if their writing has been improved by CIC curricula. We can also focus on the effectiveness of CICs within specific student populations (e.g., ESL students) and compare the effectiveness of CICs across schools and disciplines. We can also follow students who have been enrolled in multiple CICs, to see if and how their writing has changed over their entire career at Baruch, not just during one semester.
As with any “good” assessment project (see Luke’s posting from 9/12/07), we will be meeting with representatives from the Zicklin School of Business, Weissman School of Arts and Sciences, and the School of Public Affairs early next week to determine how to best use the data. Our goal is to identify each school’s unique concerns and questions and push forward with an analytical approach that satisfies the needs of each stakeholder as well as our internal curiosities as BLSCI.
I will continue to post updates as we make progress with this project. We welcome your thoughts and suggestions at any stage in the process.
What do the consumers of your product think?
At the end of the day the task of academia is to produce a graduate who can make a contribution — sometimes small, sometimes large — to the world. Assessment of this contribution is best done by the employer of the student. Hence, what do they think of the communication skills possessed by a Baruch graduate?
Reply to James Drogan