SUMMARY OF CLOSING THE LOOP ACTIVITIES IN FIQWS FOLLOWING THE
FALL 09 ASSESSMENT
April 2010
Ana Vasovic
FIQWS Writing Skills - Steve Foster, MacAdam Smith, Gina Marten, Hilary Sortor, Casey
Gordon, Christopher Kodila
1. Thesis - many papers lack strong thesis statements. Instead, they contain several weak ideas,
lacking in focus and development. Often, the thesis can only be assumed, hidden somewhere in
the body of the paper; papers read as “book reports”.
2. Structure and Organization – affected by the lack of a clear thesis; improving thesis statements
should result in stronger structure and organization of the papers. Aside from a lack of thesis and
direction issue, papers do have overall good structures, indicating that students are working from
outlines. Paragraph organization is weak and needs improvement.
3. Evidence and Development – evidence is listed, but often not analyzed/explained/justified;
mostly summarizing without interpretation; no distinguishing between important and not
important evidence; no source evaluation; overuse of quotations instead of paraphrasing,
summarizing and employing the information.
4. Mechanics and Style – There are a lot of grammar issues, some caused by ESL, some not.
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CLOSING THE LOOP
The findings and recommendations were presented to the General Education Implementation
Committee in a meeting on March 10, 2010. The following motions were approved by the
committee:
1. Create a forum for FIQWS composition faculty that will meet monthly and include
instructional guidance:
 Importance of thesis instruction – thesis statement to be required at the end of
introductory paragraph
 Importance of instruction on information source validity - Instructors need to discuss
scholarly sources vs. other sources (and how to access them) and require a certain
number of scholarly sources to be used for the final paper
 Discussion of any pedagogical issues
Experienced Composition full time faculty will take turns attending the meetings as mentors.
2. Introduce grammar instruction in FIQWS via grammar software and additional Writing
Center workshops.
********The following Writing Center workshops will be implemented as part of FIQWS
Midterm Intervention strategy starting April 2010:
a. FIQWS Fridays at the Writing center
FIQWS students can work on writing assignments or areas of weaknesses. The writing
consultants chosen for this project are primarily graduate students, with multiple years of
experience working with freshmen. The goal of this initiative is to offer a coordinated support
system to freshmen students enrolled in FIQWS.
b. Writing Series Workshops
Workshops focusing on: note taking, essay revision, critical thinking, thesis statements, essay
organization, paragraph building, document formatting, credibility of sources and grammar.
c. ESL support
3. Follow up on recommendation to include a critical thinking component into the writing
rubric
4. Follow up on recommendation to revise the writing rubric (to be proposed by the assessment
team)
5. Share the writing skills rubric with instructors and students (should be included in the
syllabus)
FIQWS Information Literacy Skills - MacAdam Smith, Nicole Treska, Alyssa Yankwitt, Justin
Turner, Amy Veach
1. Demonstrates a clear understanding of information needs and is able to search efficiently.
Many papers have weak theses statements resulting in not enough understanding of information
needs. Interpretation of information collected should be stronger and more consistent.
2. Effectively evaluates information sources
There was some use of credible academic sources and a lot of use of less credible sources.
Critical evaluation of sources was minimal. Some students were able to effectively evaluate
information, but the majority did not. Also, sources used depended mainly on the topic.
3. Articulates credibility of sources
Same as above. Some students provided author and source of information, no evaluation of the
bias of sources. Topic dependent.
4. Writes descriptive, critical, and evaluative annotations
Did not apply.
5. Uses information ethically
For the most part students acknowledged sources and seemed clear on how to avoid plagiarizing
sources. Students were usually consistent if not always accurate.
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CLOSING THE LOOP
The findings and recommendations were presented to the General Education Implementation
Committee in a meeting on March 10, 2010. The following motions were approved by the
committee:
1. Create a forum for FIQWS composition faculty that will meet monthly and include
instructional guidance:
 How to teach critical thinking
 Importance of instruction on information source validity - Instructors need to discuss
scholarly sources vs. other sources (and how to access them) and require a certain
number of scholarly sources to be used for the final paper
 Other issues
Experienced Composition full time faculty will take turns attending the meetings as mentors.
2. Require that papers written before the final paper in FIQWS include a research component
3. Require that the Final paper undergoes revisions
4. Remove the Annotations category from the rubric (while important, it is too much for FIQWS)
5. Follow up on recommendation to revise the information literacy rubric (to be proposed by
the assessment team)
6. Continue with two required library visits in FIQWS – the Librarians need to initiate
scheduling of the visits with faculty
7. Share the information literacy rubric with instructors and students (should be included in the
syllabus)