EVALUATION OF UM WRITING RETREAT, April 27, 2012
Summary
Please respond to this evaluation. Your comments will help the Writing Committee write its 2012 report and
will assist in our implementation of next year’s program assessment of 200-level writing courses. Thank you.
A. Please check the statement that best reflects your knowledge and experience with writing assessment
before this retreat.
_14___1. I created and used rubrics to assess students’ writing.
_4___2. I knew about rubrics, but have not used them regularly in my assessment of students’ writing.
____3. I did not know about rubrics for assessment students’ writing.
B. Please place a check in the column that represents your opinion.
Strongly
Agree
Agree
No
opinion
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree
1. This workshop helped me understand and
apply an analytic rubric to students’ writing.
7
9
1


2. This workshop helped me assess students’
writing more accurately and efficiently.
4
12
1


3. This workshop was a valuable professional
development experience for me.
9
7
1


4. I would recommend this workshop to my
colleagues.
12
2
2


C. Please write your responses to these 2 items. Feel free to continue your responses on the back of this
page.
1. What aspects of this workshop were most useful for you?
Learning how other disciplines perceive aspects of the rubric (Betsy)
Rubric really helpful and readable / Charming personalities and intellect- stimulating (Sally)
Hearing various approaches to using analytic rubric, spotting places in rubric that might be rewritten to clarify,
experiencing “speed reading of papers, “sharing ideas at table to explain why we rated papers for ea of the
rubric features.
Discussion/ debate about the varied ways in which we read and the varied values we carry as readers
assessing papers. I most value our conclusion that we need the assignment because genre expectations differ.
(Kelly)
The conversation- especially the dialogue between writing faculty and faculty from other disciplines. (Mark)
Discussion
The discussion! Exchange of viewpoints (Gretchen)
The conversation about rubrics (Arlene)
Hearing from colleagues in different disciplines and learning about how they view writing in their programs.
(Amy)
Discussion expectations for writing across the curriculum (Valerie)
The discussion
The rich and honest discussion about the complexities of assessing / scoring student writing (esp. using
rubrics. Thank you for fostering this! (Jake)
The discussion on the different criteria and how they apply to different disciplines; interaction with other
faculty members.
Discussion of genre in writing and how that effects reader expectations. Discussion at table for specific
examples from papers that make it a given number
Discussion – learning of how others evaluate writing (Sandra)
The conversations about writing and how we assess it. I love hearing what other professionals think. (Jan)
2. What might be changed to improve this workshop for future scorers?
I’d appreciate a bit more time to read papers (30 min ea round) so I could participate in the discussion of all
papers to benefit from the comments made. Thank you (Betsy)
Demonstrate or film a typical discussion to see what we are about to encounter (Sally)
More time, more discussion at table about why we score a particular way.
More than one day? (Kelly)
I think a more diverse group- this one is made of writing faculty and/or people committed to student writing.
Get professor grumpy in anticipating audience [hostile?] Address the complexities of assessment. Rubrics
have strength and weaknesses—purpose to make better assignments / better student writers (Mark)
More time, better prep, pre-knowledge (or at least some familiarity of rubric)
Build on our discussion- keep revising. Table discussion of traits and defense. (Gretchen)
Perhaps 1 day and then later 2 half days for various “tuning discussions” (Arlene)
I thought this was excellent. Many thanks to Beverly for her strong leadership and organization, and her
knowledge and experience with assessment. (Amy)
Papers ahead of time? (Valerie)
Keep looking for sample papers
Can we please add responsiveness to the rubric? (Jake)
Including brief description of the assignment – sometimes it was hard to evaluate the papers w/o knowing
that
Fewer papers to read, or papers given to you to read before the workshop. Have different groups focus on
one rubric area
Maybe read fewer papers (approx. 5) (Sandra)
This would be hard to beat. I look forward to seeing how we proceed with writing assessment. (Jan)