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Papers
Undergraduate Technical Writing Assessment: A Model (with Norbert Elliot)
- View Paper
Programmatic Perspectives: Journal of the Council for Programs in
Technical and Scientific Communication [forthcoming Sept. 2010]
This paper describes an assessment process developed for an undergraduate
technical writing course at a public research university. To document
program outcomes, we used a variety of statistical methods. To describe
our process, we present longitudinal performance data collected over five
years (fall 2004 through spring 2009) on 632 students. After providing
a brief overview of the measurement concepts and statistical tools that
we employ, we describe our process in five phases: designing the variable
model to ensure construct validation; designing the assessment methodology
to ensure content validation; designing the sampling plan to address economic
constraint; designing the data analysis to articulate the validation argument;
and using the assessment results to ensure consequential validation. Our
intention is to provide a model that can be applied to other institutional
sites and to encourage others to use it, tailoring the model to their
unique needs.
A Decade of Research: Assessing Change in the Technical Communication
Classroom Using Online Portfolios - View
Paper
Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 2006, (36:4),
pp. 413-431.
Over a period of ten years, we have developed a sustainable process
of online portfolio assessment that demonstrates both reliability and
validity, using both qualitative and quantitative measures. The sustainable
cycle is that, each semester, we assess a random sampling of the students’
work that they have posted, as per our instructions, in an online portfolio.
During the reading, faculty score the documents for twelve variables,
including writing, content, audience awareness and document design. We
achieved validity by a modified online Delphi that led to a redefinition
of the construct of technical communication itself and we achieved reliability
by adjudication resulting in adjacent scores. The results of our assessment
meet the requirements of ABET and result in continual cycle of improvement
for our technical communication curriculum. It has also resulted in an
improving correlation between the course grade and the separate overall
portfolio score – we are beginning to grade the variables that we
have defined.
The Analytic Assessment of Online Portfolios in Undergraduate Technical
Communication: A Model - View Paper
Journal of Engineering Education, October 2006, (95:4), pp.
279-287.
This paper describes an innovative model for assessing the technical
communication course by analytically scoring online portfolios, open to
the internet, for ten separate (analytic) variables and one overall (holistic)
score. The model is a statistically verifiable and sustainable method
that strengthens the curriculum and fosters consensus within the teaching
community. We achieved construct validity by redefining the elements of
the course to incorporate communication in the digital age and then by
creating new criteria for evaluation related to that construct. We achieved
inter-reader reliability by beginning each assessment with a calibrated
reading and by adjudicating non-adjacent scores. After using the model
successfully for three semesters, we can see increased consistency in
teaching among sections and semesters, more communication among instructors
and we are beginning a database with which we can test further change.
The theory and method behind this model can be applied to other disciplines
as well.
History of New York State Regents Exams - View
Paper
Posted on ERIC, 2009
This paper is a brief history of the Regents subject-matter examinations
and New York State’s efforts to move towards educational equity.
New York State was a leader in integrated curriculum and outcomes assessment
in high schools for over a century. The first academic exit exam was administered
in 1878 and it evolved into the controversial Regents subject matter exams,
a cycle of curriculum building and assessment, run by the state bureaucracy,
using the expertise of selected teachers. In the twentieth century, two
separate tracks of academic achievement developed: students could earn
a Regents Diploma or a Local Diploma. Late in the century, increased reporting
revealed a gap in funding and achievement between rural/suburban and city
schools. The state is presently attempting to address this problem to
provide universal access to a high-quality academic education for all,
but the results are unknown.
Impediments to Increasing Diversity in Post-secondary Education - View
Paper
Originally published in proceedings of Spring 2007 ASEE Mid-Atlantic
Section, posted on ERIC, 2010
Due to the increasing complexity in the financial aid process and the
movement of available financial aid up the economic scale, poor people
and minorities have less access to college, including engineering programs.
Some impediments are lack of access to knowledge about college, increasing
complexity and up-front costs in the application process and a gradual
legislative and judicial change to provide aid to wealthier families.
The latter changes include the weakening of the Pell Grant, increasing
reliance on student loans, loans granted regardless of need, tax breaks
for college savings, “merit” based aid, early-admissions politics
and the anti-trust decision that resulted in a lack of consistency in
creating financial-aid formulas. A rededication to need-based financial
aid would increase the number of minorities attending and graduating from
college.
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