ASCRC Writing Committee Minutes, 3/3/14
TODD 203
Members Present: I. Appelbaum, S. Brown, B. Chin, J. Glendening, J. Melcher, D. Raiford, M. Stark,
M. Triana, G. Weix
Ex-Officio Members Present: G. Harris, J. Hickman, N. Kimbell, A. Ratto- Parks, K. Webster
Members Absent/Excused: G. Burns, C. Corr
Guests : N. Clouse
The meeting was called to order at 10:10 a.m.
Approval of the 2/3/14 minutes was postponed. Camie will revise and circulate for approval at the next meeting.
Communication Item:
 Director Webster highlighted the new projects in the Writing Center’s Autumn Snapshot. The
Writing Center offered a Side Car with Anatomy & Physiology . It collaborated with the library to offer workshops for students in WRIT 101 to formalize the relationship with undergraduate research. It also offered a workshop in conjunction to the Undergraduate Research Conference
(UMCUR). The Writing Center is making an effort to work closer with the sciences.
Business Items:

Chair Chin would like all the documents related to the assessment to have a consistent label
UM University-wide Program-level Wring Assessment, (date). She asked that members be mindful of this when speaking of the assessment. The rubric could be used by audiences beyond UM, so we want to make sure UM is recognized for its creation.

Director Webster presented the student survey questions finalized by the Workgroup (appended below). The survey is intended to collect information that is not in Banner. Revision is the theme for the questions, which are written in student friendly language and they are written so that students will understand. The students must complete the survey first before uploading their paper to Moodle. There may be some manual matching of survey data to the randomly selected papers. It could be informative to pose similar questions to instructors perhaps in conjunction with Faculty Development.

Professor Brown reported on the Banner data fields that will be pulled for reporting. The fields underlined below were added to the previous UDWPA data report. IT has called a meeting to work out the specifics of the report this week. The final data fields are appended below.

ASCRC is working on a recommendation to increase the TOEFL score requirement for full admission and reaffirming policy that requires international students to take academic support courses.


Chair Chin has been working on multiple aspects of the retreat. Registration will begin at
8:30a.m. Kelly Webster, Jake Hansen, and Mark Triana will greet participants and serve as hosts. There will be one or two participants stepping out to teach a class for just over an hour.
Naomi Kimbel, Jessica Jones, and Chair Chin have been working to identify additional training papers in order to have a variety of writing and topics. Most of these papers were identified as possible training papers by participants at last year’s Writing Retreat that were marked by scorers as possible training papers. Kimbel, Jones, and Chin also created annotations for these new training papers and decided not to change the anchor papers.
There was concern about categorizing /labeling the papers by discipline and the possible unintended consequence. The categories were for internal organizing in order to vary the topics and kinds of writing. The label will be removed completely from any reports or information given at the retreat.
Naomi reported on her work and provided a brief demonstration of the Moodle Shell from both the student view and the instructor view. The Moodle site will be open for submissions by the end of the week. The committee made suggestions for improvements. The due date should be on the site, survey needs to be updated to the most recent version, and there should be direct links to the holistic rubric. Instructors will receive email instructions with screen shots once the site is available for submissions. Under course report, instructors will be able to scroll to find their course to check to see whether students enrolled in their course have submitted papers.
They could also see whether students enrolled in other courses submitted papers. Chair Chin requested volunteers to give the Moodle shell a look over before it becomes live. Professor
Weix and Applebaum, and Academic Advisor Harris volunteered. Naomi’s report is appended.
She is documenting the steps in the process.
Associate Provost Walker Andrews decided that we will randomly select 10% (approximately
130 papers) of the student papers this semester. In the future a stratified sample may be considered. If any department wants to look at the writing samples from their own students, it will be possible to pull them from Moodle using the data fields to sort them by major. The process to link the papers to the survey response and Banner Data has yet to be determined.

Professor Raiford reported on the initial efforts to analyze the data of transfer students. There is no statistical difference between transfer students who take WRIT 101 at UM or from their transfer institution. In fact it appears students that transferred with WRIT 101 credit have a slightly higher GPA. Seventy percent of transfer students transferred with credit for WRIT 101.
The Workgroup has asked for data on non-transfer students in order to make a comparison.
Professor Raiford will generate a report when the full analysis is complete.
 The Writing Committee has received a petition to evaluate a student’s transfer course for an exemption to an approved writing course. Professor Ratto-Parks has reviewed the petition.
The student was in a dual credit program at an Oregon High School. The course used the same book as WRIT 201. The petition was provided to Professors Raiford and Appelbaum to review. They will report their recommendations to Professor Ratto-Parks, who will communicate to the student and provide an update to the Committee in April. The committee agreed that the procedure for review should be that the petitions are reviewed by the Director of
Composition and two other faculty members from the Writing Committee. This may need to be specified on the policy. In the future the Committee may need to consider the difficulty students may have in producing three papers with original instructor comments. Students may

not save such materials from courses taken online.

Edits discussed at the last meeting were made to both the Writing Course Form and the Upperdivision Writing Form. Professor Stark will add language to the Writing Course Form indicating the requirement to submit student papers for the University-wide Program-level
Writing Assessment.
Good and Welfare

Professor Weix is helping a student appeal for meeting her upper-division writing requirement with one of her courses. The student is majoring in French and has a minor in Anthropology.
French does not have a specific upper-division writing requirement in the major. French students are directed to choose a course from the approved list. The Writing Committee should find out how many programs do not have discipline specific upper-division writing requirements and work out a structural solution that serves students in programs without upperdivision writing requirements. Professors Weix and Stark, and student member Jill Melcher will work on this issue.
Meeting was adjourned at12:10 p.m.
Student Survey
How many times did you revise this paper in response to your instructor’s feedback?

Once

Twice

More than two times
 I did not revise this paper in response to my instructor’s feedback
If you did revise this paper, what kind of instructor feedback helped you revise? (check all that apply)

Written comments

Comments related to the grading criteria/rubric

Line by line editing

In-person discussion with the instructor

Email discussion with the instructor

Small-group or whole-class discussion of assignment

Other (describe)
If you did revise this paper in response to your instructor’s feedback, what level of revision did you do? (check all that apply)

Major changes
(for example: reshaped the paper entirely, changed my thesis, changed my topic, started over)

Mid-level changes
(for example: reorganized the ideas, further developed existing points, revised use of source materials)

Minor changes
(for example: corrected typos; corrected grammatical, punctuation, and spelling mistakes; fixed my citation formatting)

Writing Assessment Coordinator Report to the Writing Committee: March 3 rd , 2014
Moodle:

Moodle will be open for submissions sometime in the first week of March. Final preparations are being made to ensure it is working properly. Items of note on the site are as follows: o “About” links feature a brief overview of the project and provide links to more information o The four-question survey developed by the Writing Committee o A single upload link—students will be automatically sorted by course in Moodle so they won’t have to look through a list to find their course o A link for instructors to check submissions
Sampling process:

Naomi Kimbell met with Arlene Walker-Andrews and we decided to pull a random sample of
10% of the submitted papers.

The number of papers pulled is directly related to the number of papers we think can reasonably be scored at the retreat.

During the pilot assessment, not all approved writing courses participated and as a result the sample size was much smaller.

In the future, if random sampling does not lead to a satisfactory sample, we will use stratified sampling.

If any department wants to look at the writing samples from their own students, it will be possible to pull them from Moodle using the data fields to sort them by major.

However: o The writing samples pulled will still be unidentifiable by student, course and instructor as this information will have been removed prior to submission. o Departments will work directly with Nancy Clouse at UMOnline if they are interested in a closer review of submissions by their own students.
Training papers:

Because a large variety of papers were collected during the pilot program, subject areas of the training papers have been be expanded. Expansion of subject areas in both the training and anchor papers will continue as assessments recur in order to keep retreat materials fresh.

Jessica Jones and Naomi Kimbell developed annotations for the new training papers. Copies of training papers and the new annotations can be made available to Writing Committee members if needed.
Banner Data Fields
UM ID
LAST NAME
FIRST NAME
MIDDLE
MAJOR
COLLEGE
I-ATTEMPTED
SPRIDEN_ID
SPRIDEN_LAST_NAME
SPRIDEN_FIRST_NAME
SPRIDEN_MI
SGBSTDN_MAJR_CODE_1
SGBSTDN_COLL_CODE_1
SHRLGPA_HOURS_ATTEMPTED,
GPA_TYPE_IND = ‘I’

I-EARNED
I-GPA
T-ATTEMPTED
T-EARNED
T-GPA
O-ATTEMPTED
O-EARNED
O-GPA
WRIT 101 GRADE
Approved Writing Subject1
Approved Writing Course1
Approved Writing Grade1
Approved Writing Subject2
Approved Writing Course2
Approved Writing Grade2
Upper Division Writing Subject1
Upper Division Writing Course1
Upper Division Writing Grade1
Upper Division Writing Subject2
Upper Division Writing Course2
Upper Division Writing Grade2
TRANSFER COLLEGE
TRANSFER WRIT 101 GRADE
TOFEL SCORE
AP COMP CREDIT
MUSWA
ACT WRITING SUB-SCORE
ACT COMBINED
ENGLISH/WRITING
SAT ESSAY SUB-SCORE
SAT WRITING SECTION
FIRST GENERATION
GENDER
TERM CODE
ACTIVITY DATE
SHRLGPA_HOURS_EARNED,
GPA_TYPE_IND = ‘I’
SHRLGPA_GPA, GPA_TYPE_IND = ‘I’
SHRLGPA_HOURS_ATTEMPTED,
GPA_TYPE_IND = ‘T’
SHRLGPA_HOURS_EARNED,
GPA_TYPE_IND = ‘T’
SHRLGPA_GPA, GPA_TYPE_IND = ‘T’
SHRLGPA_HOURS_ATTEMPTED,
GPA_TYPE_IND = ‘O’
SHRLGPA_HOURS_EARNED,
GPA_TYPE_IND = ‘O’
SHRLGPA_GPA, GPA_TYPE_IND = ‘O’
Same field as “English Comp Grade” on old
UDWPA job
Student’s earliest course where
SCRATTR_ATTR_CODE = ‘WRC’ OR
‘WRLD’
Same as above
Same as above
Student’s next earliest course where
SCRATTR_ATTR_CODE = ‘WRC’ or ‘WRLD’
Same as above
Same as above
Student’s earliest course where
SCRATTR_ATTR_CODE = ‘WRUD’
Same as above
Same as above
Student’s next earliest course where
SCRATTR_ATTR_CODE = ‘WRUD’
Same as above
Same as above
Same field as used in old UDWPA job
Same as “Transfer English Comp Course Grade” in old UDWPA
SORTEST_TESC_CODE = ‘TOEF’
Y/N field set when SHRTRCE_SUBJ_CODE =
‘WRIT’, SHRTRCE_CRSE_NUMB =’101’ and
SHRTRCE_GRADE = ‘AP*’
SORTEST_TESC_CODE = ‘MTW’
SORTEST_TESC_CODE = ‘SWR’
SORTEST_TESC_CODE = ‘A07’
SORTEST_TESC_CODE = ‘S08’
SORTEST_TESC_CODE = ‘S07’
Y/N field set when SPBPERS_LGCY_CODE =
‘N’
SPBPERS_SEX
<from job parameter>
<job run date>

Job Parameters:

Input File Name

Term Code

Email Address
Other Notes:

Each file will be appended to the new table and never cleared out so that longitudinal data can be assessed.

Job output needs to be a .csv file sent to the email entered for the parm value and a job report detailing the number of records read, rejected and loaded