Many teachers have had a favorable response to their experimentation with digital feedback on students' writing. Students much preferred a simpler system of highlighting and commenting in color. After experimentation the author found that this color-coded system was more effective for them and less time-consuming for her. Of course, any system…

Portfolio assessment has become the predominant best practice in writing assessment at the college level. Despite its clear superiority to previous methods of assessment, portfolio assessment has brought its own collection of challenges. Although the stated goal of much portfolio grading is to create an overall, or holistic, judgment of a…

Recognizing that students shudder at revision and see it as a perfunctory task to satisfy only their teachers, the author offers an approach that motivates students to revise thoughtfully without increasing teachers' reading workload. Quite simply, good writing requires less time to read than poor writing. The Numbers Approach to grading can free…

This article describes midterm assessment techniques that helped students tap into their process as emerging writers, and how the author used this feedback to realign the course at a pivotal time to reach resistant students.

Describes a program that will help college students by directing them towards meaningful, clearly understandable, short range goals, and by helping them gain control over important aspects of their spelling problems. (CRH)

Describes several diagnostic tools used to determine specific problems of students referred to a writing lab, including structured interviews, protocols (asking a student to compose aloud for 15 to 20 minutes on a short topic), and back-pedaling (questioning what a student already knows about a given topic). (AEA)

Asserts that learner-centered classroom research helps community college instructors discover how and how well students learn. Argues that teacher-initiated research projects promote collaboration in classrooms and across the campus, enhance faculty understanding of the learning process, and encourage teachers to try new methods. (RDS)

Describes the process the teaching staff of one college went through in developing an exit examination and standards for their English 101 course, and states that students are writing better and that the instructors are better teachers of writing because of it. (CRH)