Core 110 CART Report
2009-2010
I.
State of the CART
Staffing
Effective Writing is a vital part of a good liberal arts education. Here at King’s, the English
department has always valued and supported what at some other institutions is seen merely as
a “service” class, done only as an obligation. Each of our full-time faculty members has
taught Core 110 at least once in the last two years, and most have taught the class more
frequently than that. In fact, most of the department teaches the course at least once a year.1
Our part-time instructors are a qualified group, and we have been fortunate enough to have
several return semester after semester. Currently, we have five part-time instructors in Core
110. All of these instructors receive good evaluations, have proven reliable in the classroom,
and keep in good communication with the CART leader. Two of them possess terminal
degrees as well. Rebecca Lane holds an M.F.A. from New York University and Stephen
Housenick holds a Ph. D. from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Course content
In addition, we strive to keep this course fresh, both as a response to how students are
changing, but also as an acknowledgement that we need to keep the course interesting for
both teachers and students. We are always reviewing materials and considering what works,
why it works, and what might work better with these students at this time. For example, the
proliferation of electronic texts and visual media has affected the ways in which students
write and think about writing. Some Core 110 instructors have sought and found textbooks
that will respond better to these changes than traditional textbooks have. One instructor has
developed a mini-assignment that requires students to write an email to the instructor using
correct grammar, tone, and appropriate content.
In addition, others of us, noting changes in the ways that students value and understand the
liberal arts, the use of outside sources, and “real” world writing, have changed textbooks and
/or developed assignments that will respond specifically to these concerns.
Core 110L
An important change for the CART in the past two years has been the addition of a 1-credit,
P/F course: Core 110L: Grammar Lab. This course was developed in response to the
1
The one exception to this is Fr. Tony Grasso, Associate Vice-President for Academic
Affairs, who last taught the course in Spring 2007. Prior to Tony’s appointment in
Administration, he taught Core 110 at least once a year.
significant number of students we were seeing in our Core 110 classes whose grammar and
usage problems were so great that they were unable to rise to the level of acceptable college
writing in one semester. In the class, using writing the students bring in from Core 110,
students review basic grammar concepts such as sentence fragments and run-ons, subjectverb agreement, and comma use.
All entering students now take a Grammar Proficiency Exam when they arrive at King’s. If
they score below a 60%, they are required to take Core 110L during the semester in which
they enroll in Core 110.
Areas of concern
As has been the case for many years, one of the biggest concerns for Core 110 is the high
concentration of part-time instructors. While we have faith that our current staff does well in
the classroom, part-time employment is inherently unstable, low-paying, and potentially lessrewarding in that these instructors often become “road warriors,” driving all over the area to
various colleges to make ends meet. Over the last five years, an average of only 33% of Core
110 sections have been taught by full-time faculty members. This low number is detrimental
to our students, the vast majority of whom take the course during their first year of college, a
year Academic Affairs has repeatedly identified as crucial to retention and overall success in
college. Full-time faculty have more time to devote to the students, generally have a wider
breadth of knowledge, and have a deeper commitment to the school and to the profession.
We have requested on several occasions that we be granted one or more instructorships to
help alleviate this problem. Rich Sanders has been on a full-time contract for a few years
now, and that is helpful, but more such positions are needed. Neal Bukeavich, English
Department Chair, has requested two instructorships for the 2010-2011 year, but at the time
of this writing, we have not heard an answer to that request. Laurie Sterling, former chair,
made similar requests during her tenure as chair.
Another area of concern is that we are, for the most part, unable to teach in computer labs.
Across the country, composition is taught at least part of the time in this type of classroom.
This has been the case for approximately 15 years and King’s is woefully behind the times on
this issue. I will discuss this issue at length in the section entitled “Discipline Review.”
An additional issue has been the continuing problems working with Academic Advisement to
implement the Grammar Proficiency Test and the Grammar Lab itself. Since the test began,
in the summer of 2008, the problems have been many:

We have not been supported in our efforts to host the Grammar Proficiency Test online;
Academic Advisement insists on using paper tests. Online testing would allow us to
assess the test itself and study patterns in student responses with an eye toward improving
the test and in-class instruction.

The test was altered without our knowledge. No source for this alteration was ever
identified.

Academic Advisement unilaterally changed the passing grade from a 29 to a 28.
Finally, we have reason to believe that the methods used for placing students into Core 99
and Core 110 border on the arbitrary; anecdotal evidence is revealing a host of
misplacements in both directions. The team has two requests on this front: 1) that a rubric be
used to make these placements and 2) that the CART, or at least the CART leader, be
involved in the process, as has not been the case in the past.
II.
Assessment
Two assessment projects have been ongoing for the CART this year; one project concerns
Effective Writing and the other the Effective Writing Lab.
Effective Writing Assessment
For this project, we are focusing on citation issues. One of our objectives in Core 110 is to
teach students the many ins and outs of proper citation. This includes not only finding and
evaluating sources, but using them correctly and honestly as well. We collected documented
essays from our Effective Writing classes in the 2008-2009 school year and evaluated them
solely for how they used outside sources. Three members of the CART, Jennifer McClintonTemple, Mike Little, and Noreen O’Connor read the essays and scored them using the rubric
in Appendix D. The results, with 1 being the highest score and 3 being the lowest, were as
follows:
1 = 5 essays
2= 6 essays
3= 7 essays
In general, the team was unhappy with these results and intends to recommend changes to the
CART.
Our recommendations to the CART will include:



Instructors should give more attention to helping students understand how to find
quality sources. Library sessions, especially when the instructors work closely with
the librarians can help with this. Also, an annotated bibliography assignment can
help to further this goal.
Instructors should consider teaching a paper in which students are given specific
sources to use (before they are asked to find their own). This can serve as practice
for incorporating their own sources.
Instructors need to find new ways in which to teach students to incorporate their
quotes into sentences. The book They Say, I Say, by Gerald Graff was mentioned as
a good tool for teaching this task. Also, instructors should consider being more strict
in terms of grading when students use hanging quotes (quotes not connected to the
surrounding text by introductory and interpretive commentary).
We will revisit this issue in about a year in order to see whether or not the implementation of
the recommendations has improved citation in Effective Writing.
Effective Writing Lab Assessment
We are currently involved in an assessment project for our new lab class. We randomly
selected a sample of students enrolled in Core 110L in Fall 2009. From their Core 110
instructors, we collected two papers, one at the beginning of the semester and one at the end.
We will collect a third paper from a class in the Spring 2010 semester that does not focus on
writing. A three member team, using a rubric, will assess the grammar of these three papers
in order to see if there is improvement in the level of error.
III.
Interdisciplinary Connections
Core 110 is intimately tied to most other liberal arts courses. Any course in which the
student engages in written communication is connected to what we do in Effective Writing.
IV.
Discipline Review
One important trend in our discipline is the use of computers to teach composition.
Unfortunately, King’s lags far behind in this area. Since at least 1990, studies have
consistently demonstrated that student writing improves with computer-aided instruction. In
2004, the Conference on College Composition and Communication issued a position
statement that reads, in part, “The focus of writing instruction is expanding: the curriculum of
composition is widening to include not one but two literacies: a literacy of print and a literacy
of the screen. In addition, work in one medium is used to enhance learning in the other.”
Computer-aided instruction is well understood to benefit writing in and of itself; moreover,
as business environments are increasingly digital, computer-aided instruction provides a vital
connection to the working lives most of our students will enter.
Our students simply do not compose in longhand any longer. When they write, they write
using computers. All aspects of the writing process--inventing, researching, composition,
revising, editing, proofreading—are done using a keyboard and a computer screen. In
addition, issues involving plagiarism and academic integrity are now inextricably linked to
computer and Internet resources. We need computers in our classrooms so that we may more
effectively teach students how to find and evaluate sources, how to revise their papers and
the papers of others, and how to maintain academic honesty while composing college-level
writing.
The King’s College Strategic Plan looks to “Increase student engagement, learning, and
success through pedagogical innovations”; computer-aided composition instruction is a
pedagogical innovation that has become a commonplace in the field, while our Effective
Writing curriculum is rapidly becoming antiquated because it cannot incorporate models of
digital literacy and instruction. The CART, as well as the English Department as a whole,
believes that Effective Writing classes need access to a dedicated computer lab; all of our
Effective Writing classes should be taught with access to computers, and our (roughly)
fifteen sections each semester cannot compete for existing space on campus.