English Department Assessment Report
Fall, 2006 and Spring, 2007

The English Department began its assessment program in January, 1989.  While its forms and activities have changed over time, its purpose remains the same.  Because we have so many different faculty teaching our courses, especially our core courses of ENG071, ENG101, and ENG102 (and their ESL counterparts), our assessment activities help us ensure that we all agree on what we mean by college-level writing and what we understand to be acceptable performance in these courses.  

This agreement contributes significantly to student success because it ensures that a student completing one course is prepared for the next course in the sequence.  In addition, assessment activities help us ensure that students completing courses in our department are prepared to write competently in other courses at GCC.  Finally, these activities help us document that students transferring to other colleges and universities have the skills and writing experiences they will need to succeed in their educational careers.   Faculty don’t teach writing in an individual class isolated from these other educational environments and activities.  We have responsibilities to our colleagues as well as to our students.

At the heart of assessment are the course competencies which define the scope and activities of each course.  In our assessment program, we further define these competencies by participating in common instructional activities and applying shared standards to the evaluation of student writing.  

The English Department (as well as the college) requires all faculty to participate in assessment activities each semester for each course they teach. The Assessment Committee or lead faculty for each course provide common assessment activities for our core courses each semester, and all faculty (no matter which courses they teach) participate in the analysis and evaluation of a selection of these essays or paragraphs.   Faculty who teach courses other than the core courses, or faculty who prefer to develop other assessment activities, report these activities (including their results) in the department’s Online Assessment Notebook.  This resource, organized by instructor, course, division, and semester, provides a rich picture of writing instruction in all our courses.

What follows is a report of department-wide participation in assessment activities for the academic year 2006-2007.

For Fall, 2006, the Assessment Committee offered a common final assignment option (a documented argument on any topic the instructor designated) for ENG101.  A small group of ENG071/ESL077 also developed a group assessment activity.

	Total # of faculty	Faculty filing individual reports 	Faculty participating in group option 	Total participating	
FT Faculty	40	9 	9 	16 (40 %)	
PT Faculty	97	2 	4	6 (6%)	
Total	137	11 	13	22 (16%)	

For Spring, 2007, we offered both a common final assignment option.(a documented argument on the topic of volunteerism for ENG101) and a common summary option (for ENG 102).

There were four options for the summaries; by far, students chose the Brody article on safe driving to summarize (when they had a choice).  We received 165 summaries (60 of which summarized the article on driving).  We had a dozen or so multiple submissions.  Nine different faculty assigned the summary as the means of assessing student achievement in ENG 102.

The topic for the argumentative essay was Volunteerism, and we provided many different kinds of instructional resources, including recommendations for instructional activities, various brainstorming and drafting tools, and the department argumentative essay rubric. We received 62 on-topic submissions from classes taught by 3 faculty members.

	Total # of faculty	Faculty filing individual reports ( # and %)	Faculty participating in group option	Total # participating	
FT Faculty	40	15  	6 	22 (55 %)	
PT Faculty	84	6  	3	10 (12 %)	
Total	124	21 	9 	32 (26 %)	

Some faculty did both an independent and a group assessment option, depending upon the courses they were teaching.  Some provided the assessment activity as an option.  As we examine participation across the department, we can identify many areas for improvement.

 Observations

1.	The level of participation, while growing, is still much below where it must be in order to be considered department-wide.  The Assessment Notebook provides resources for developing independent assessment activities, and the reports submitted provide some models that faculty can consult.  There is no requirement that assessment activities have to occur at the very end of the semester (when instructors are busy with other tasks), although they should be late in the semester in order to measure student competency as a result of the course.  

2.	In order to assess writing effectively, we need to have students (or faculty) submit essays and paragraphs electronically.  In the past, some students and faculty have had difficulty dropping essays into the electronic drop boxes.  We have revised the instructions for this activity, although we could offer specific training or classroom assistance if faculty feel there is a need.  Some essays and paragraphs were submitted via email, and this is a possible back-up option.

3.	Many faculty have noted that they do not teach in computer classrooms and thus cannot have students submit essays electronically.  While there is no requirement that these pieces of writing be done in class (and online classes do their writing outside the confines of a class room), the department has many options (especially during the week of final exams) for scheduling classes in HT2, either in the PIT or in computer classrooms.  Essays in electronic format can protect student and faculty identity, and help us collect a random sample of student writing.  In the future, we can use this collection of essays for additional kinds of analysis.

4.	Providing common assignments, while a mainstay of our early assessment program, may be a new opportunity for some faculty.  However, now that we have experience with common assignments for both English 101 and English 102, faculty can see how the process works and how they can incorporate this activity into their course planning.  

5.	After we collect the results from the group assessment and receive comments from faculty participating in this activity in Spring, 2007, we will revise the summarizing activity slightly, providing a few new articles.  We welcome feedback about this assessment option.

6.	In April, 2007, we established the general topic for the documented argument for the group assessment of ENG101 this fall: cell phone use.  We intend to provide an assignment document and a variety of source material on a web page by October 15, 2007.  If you intend to participate in the group assessment option, we will ask you to indicate so at that time.  Faculty could use the topic and materials from Spring, 2007 (on volunteerism) as an example in their classes in preparation for the group assessment activity at the end of Fall, 2007.