Office of Assessment
The Assessment Scholar program was first utilized at the University in 2001, when three SIUE faculty conducted separate studies of student writing. These samples came from portfolios of student material collected by the Office of Undergraduate Assessment and Program Review. Initial student portfolio material had been voluntarily collected between 1994 and 2002 from students across the campus, through an initiative modeled after a portfolio program at Miami University in the 1980's.
The intent of the "Wing Portfolio Project" (which received this interesting moniker because many participants were recruited from a wing of the newly opened Woodland residence Hall on campus) was to collect unbiased writing samples students from the time they entered SIUE as freshman through their senior year. Participants signed contracts with the Office of Undergraduate Assessment and Program Review at the beginning of the project, and were given file folders for each course they were enrolled in. Items collected and turned into the UAPR office at the end of each semester included syllabi for each class and all graded exams and papers returned to the students. Additional information could include a survey of student attitude or another topic and a study time log. In exchange for turning in this material, students would receive an item of SIUE clothing, such as a shirt, hat, sweat shorts, and finally, a varsity jacket at graduation. A total of 139 portfolios of student work were collected, although the majority did not culminate with a student's graduation. Many students left the University or did not stick with the program. Nearly half (49%), however, did contain at least four semesters worth of collected student work.
In 2000, the Office of Undergraduate Assessment and Program Review put out a call for Assessment Scholars who would study an aspect of student writing at SIUE by utilizing the Wing Portfolios. Faculty submitted research proposals, which were then peer reviewed before three were selected.
Ellen Lavelle of Educational Leadership examined 30 portfolios and compared the quality of freshman/sophomore-level writing with that of juniors and seniors. Dr. Lavelle used two rubrics (holistic and deep- and surface-measure) to evaluate writing samples, and found no significant differences between early-level and late-level student writing at SIUE. Furthermore, she did not find a significant connection between writing quality and the student's grade point average. Dr. Lavelle's study was published in Quality in Higher Education [Lavelle, E. (2003/April 2003). The Quality of University Writing: a preliminary analysis of undergraduate portfolios. Quality in Higher Education, 9 (1), 87-93.]
Lesa Stern of Speech Communication looked at the type of comments professors put on student papers during the grading process. She and an assistant researcher examined nearly 600 graded papers culled from courses taught in 30 different departments at SIUE and categorized the written comments. This study found that an overwhelming majority of these comments were editorial in nature, correcting problems such as grammar, punctuation and spelling. Very few comments focused on the thought-process behind the student writing, the presentation of ideas, or paper organization. Dr. Stern's work was published in Assessing Writing [Stern, L.A., & Solomon, A. (2006) Effective faculty feedback: The road less traveled. Assessing Writing. 9 (1), 22-41.]
Robert Ware of Philosophy compared writing programs across various SIUE curriculums with that of other institutions.