WRITING CENTER
ASSESSMENT
Brian Fallon, FIT/SUNY
Ben Rafoth, IUP
IWCA Summer Institute 2013
What are your assessment needs?
• What are your current assessment
needs?
• What kind of assessment do you
imagine you will need to do in the next
year? the next five years?
Internal Needs vs. External Needs
Internal Needs
External Needs
Tutoring
Accreditation Organizations
Usage Tracking
Administration
Student Satisfaction
Grants
Internal/External: Assessment Stories
• Ben’s Assessment: Focused on best practices in tutoring
• Brian’s Assessment: Focused on the program
Accountability:
• Ben: Are tutors doing what we believe they should be
doing?
• Brian: Is the program serving the needs of the institution?
Reflect
• Based on the conversation thus far, label each of your
original assessment needs with an I (internal) or an E
(external).
How do we know we’re effective?
Or, based on the tension between internal
and external needs, how do we define
effectiveness in the Writing Center?
Writing and Assessment
“Assessment has become a public and educational issue,
not solely a technical one. We no longer seem to be
content to be told that assessments meet certain
psychometric and statistical requirements. We want to
know whether they help or hurt learning and teaching.”
(Broad, 2003, p. 9)
What we really value
“Instructors, administrators, and researchers of writing, as
well as our students, our colleagues elsewhere in the
academy, and the general public, all deserve both a
rigorous inquiry into what we really value and a detailed
document recording the results of that inquiry”
(Broad, 2003, p. 12-13).
“The ability to assess is the ability to determine and control
what is valuable”
(Huot, 2002, p. 107).
Models of Assessment*
Goalattainment
Judgmental
Decisionfacilitation
*Adapted from Popham by Joan Hawthorne
Naturalistic
Mickey Harris
“One of the important outcomes of institutional research
done by a writing center administrator is that the writing
center becomes an effective, integral part of its campus. It
serves that institution and that institution’s students and
faculty. A writing center actively involved in molding itself to
the institution and furthering the work of that institution is
therefore not some generic learning assistance program…”
(Harris 86)
Jon Olson et al.
“Furthermore, assessment need not represent a quantified,
numerical point of abstraction far removed from human
interaction…assessment can be the very thing that reveals
and enacts the reason why writing programs exist in the
first place: to improve communication between writers and
readers.”
“In other words, assessing a program can be like tutoring a
writer—addressing questions, through conversation, that
help people see more clearly what they’ve been doing so
they can then do more effectively what they need to
achieve.”
(Olson, Moyer, and Falda)
Neal Lerner
“Collaborating with colleagues across our institutions can
serve the dual purpose of capitalizing on local expertise
and sending the message that the writing center is serious
about assessment.”
Writing Center Assessment Might Include:
• Outcomes Assessment (Goal-oriented assessment)
• Assessment of campus-wide need for the services
•
•
•
•
provided
Satisfaction of those who use the writing center
Comparisons with similar programs nationwide
Cost efficiency
Usage Tracking
Courtesy of Joan Hawthorne
Lerner’s Framework for Research on
Writing Center Effects:
1. Keep track of who participates
2. Assess student needs
3. Assess student satisfaction
4. Assess campus environments
5. Assess outcomes
6. Find comparable institution assessment
7. Use nationally accepted standards to assess
My take-away:
Top 5 Assessment Lessons
• Goals
• Negotiation
• Expertise
• Appease
• Control
Balancing what matters to me, to the Writing
Center, to tutors, to students, and to the
administration.
Goals
• Writing Studio Goal: Assess how the Writing Studio meets
student, tutor, and faculty needs.
• Institutional Goal: Evaluate Customer Service and
Business Processes
• Shared Goal: Assess how the Writing Studio supports
FIT’s strategic.
Negotiation
“Excuse me, Brian. Is there something wrong with your
eyebrows?”
• Business Models vs. Educational Models?
• What’s the real value of the Writing Studio?
• Customer experience vs. learning experience?
Expertise
• Relying on national standards.
• Bringing external reviewers with WC expertise.
• Research similar institutions and any relevant literature.
Tutor Focus Group-What I saw vs. what the Dean of Institutional Assessment saw:
ME
DEAN
Need for Mentoring
Need for hand sanitizer
More Administrative Support
Need for a secretary
Appease
• Ok, I’ll create that flow chart.
Control
• Stand up for what’s valuable about your writing center.
• Educate your administration about the program, the
tutors, the mission, and the pedagogy.
e.g., peer tutors benefit from being tutors (PWTARP)
Build assessments that:
• show you and other audiences what is or isn’t happening
in the writing center.
• focus on goals that are attainable and worthwhile.
Your take-away:
Take a moment to reflect on:
• What do you make of your original assessment needs at
this point?
• Have you changed your mind about internal/external
needs?
• What questions do you still have about assessment?