Holistic assessment of writing in design

Debra Larson, Sibylle Gruber, David Scott, Melvin Neville

Research output: Contribution to journalConference articlepeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

This paper describes our two-semester effort to integrate writing instruction into a multi-disciplinary sophomore engineering design course and our programmatic assessment approach. We employed a strategy that consisted of administering a pre and post-instruction in-class un-graded writing activity that was blindly scored using holistic techniques by a group of diverse evaluators. The results of this assessment experiment showed no growth in student writing as measured over a semester length of time; indicated that students' attitude about the assessment process can influence results; and pointed out problems with the development of good prompts. In addition, the calibration process used to train evaluators was most beneficial; yielding a consensus standard of performance that was applied to not only the pre- and post-tests evaluation, but also within the classroom.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)231-235
Number of pages5
JournalProceedings - Frontiers in Education Conference
Volume1
StatePublished - 1998
EventProceedings of the 1998 28th Annual Frontiers in Education Conference, FIE. Part 3 (of 3) - Tempe, AZ, USA
Duration: Nov 4 1998Nov 7 1998

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Education
  • Computer Science Applications

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