Writing is complex, and assessment of writing is equally complex, particularly when considering the need to measure outcomes at the institutional level while providing meaningful data that informs curriculum reform and supports learning at the discipline-level. Using a multi-layered assessment that incorporates standardized measures of writing…

Beginning in the fall of 2008 (and continuing through the spring of 2013), Virginia State University, America's first fully state supported four-year institution of higher learning for Blacks and one of two land-grant institutions in the Commonwealth of Virginia, launched a comprehensive and ambitious program to develop a culture of writing (and…

Researcher and educator Charles Cooper responds to questions about writing evaluation theories, contexts, methods, and instruments. (FL)

The writing across the curriculum program at Michigan Technological University was designed to change teacher and student attitudes about course-assigned writing as well as to change writing practices by means of a series of faculty workshops. After four years, a team of seven faculty members from rhetoric and composition, literature, psychology,…

Intended for administrators and policy makers as well as teachers, this digest explores the components common to effective writing programs. The digest first discusses activities at the classroom level as the foundation of a successful writing program and elements that should be included in classroom instruction, such as the process approach to…

Presents responses to three "College English" articles, C.H. Knoblauch and Lil Brannon's "Writing as Learning through the Curriculum" (September 1983), Helen Schwartz's "Monsters and Mentors" (February 1982), and James C. Raymond's "Rhetoric: The Methodology of the Humanities" (December 1982). Includes the…

A case study examined the implementation of a schoolwide writing program established in a California middle school through a district sponsored school improvement program (SIP). Conducted at an urban sprawl southern California school of approximately 900 students in grades seven and eight, the program was directed and implemented by the English…

This resource manual resulted from a professional development project conducted in New York to provide two-year college staff members with the awareness, skills, and knowledge necessary to facilitate and reinforce occupational students' acquisition of writing skills. Introductory material outlines the purposes and objectives of the project, i.e.,…