This article attempts to structure student assessment practices in the classroom. Informed by fourth generation evaluation, it discusses a pedagogy based on a recursive framework of writing, assessment, and reflection activities that move students toward productive praxis. Implemented over three semesters at a land grant university in the U.S.,…

The current research was conducted to investigate the validity of automated essay scoring (AES) by comparing group mean scores assigned by an AES tool, IntelliMetric [TM] and human raters. Data collection included administering the Texas version of the WriterPlacer "Plus" test and obtaining scores assigned by IntelliMetric [TM] and by…

The use of online rater self-training is growing in popularity and has obvious practical benefits, facilitating access to training materials and rating samples and allowing raters to reorient themselves to the rating scale and self monitor their behaviour at their own convenience. However there has thus far been little research into rater…

Maja Wilson believes that efforts to standardize language through rubrics and generalized comments provide a disservice to students and undermine the power of the reading and writing experience. She advocates making use of our subjectivity as readers, conceding that her values cannot be standardized and often shift in response to interactions with…

"Developing and Assessing an Online Research Writing Course" discusses how the Writing Program at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) created a hybrid, online research writing course, Writing 50, and assessed that course. The assessment, which is at the center of this piece, was dovetailed with assessment literature in…

Since the first definitive references to portfolio evaluation in assessment literature, metaphors have been significant in shaping students' and teachers' understanding of the role of the portfolio in the writing classroom. Consider the range of metaphors employed in discussions about portfolios. Margie Krest, for instance, emphasizes the social…

Generative response modeling is an approach to test development and response modeling that calls for the creation of items in such a way that the parameters of the items on some response model can be anticipated through knowledge of the psychological processes and knowledge required to respond to the item. That is, the computer would not merely…

Much speculation abounds concerning how expensive performance assessments are or are going to be. Recent projections indicate that, in order to achieve an acceptably high generalizability coefficient, many additional tasks may need to be added, which will enlarge costs. Such projections are, to some degree, correct, and to some degree simplistic.…

This Digest provides a rationale for developing grading guides to use with business writing students. It describes the methods business communications teachers can use to construct and employ guides to provide students with quality writing instruction. The Digest maintains that teachers can construct either skills analysis grading guides and/or…

Students may forget that writing involves a relationship between writer and audience--a relationship foregrounded by speech-act theory. The writer should focus on what the audience is to be led to see about the subject. To be distinguished are "locution" (saying something), "illocution" (performance of an act in saying…

In carrying out a successful writing workshop, careful attention must be given to the proper role and function of the teacher. Research indicates the power of extended peer response to writing and the benefits of writers talking with their peers about their writing. To construct more specific guidelines for the function of teachers in writing…

One way to help teachers know how to give better assistance to students is to have students analyze their papers in a letter or memo attached to their essays. In one class, such memos are called "Learning from your own writing process," and typically describe: (1) what the student was trying to do; (2) what seemed to work or not work in…

This booklet provides Alberta (Canada) grade 9 teachers, administrators, and students with samples of the full range of students' writing that exemplify the criteria used to score students' written responses on the June 1990 Grade 9 English Language Arts Achievement Test. Commentary accompanying the students' writing samples in the booklet…

A study investigated whether some level of writing apprehension or some expressed attitude toward writing might result in better essay scores. Subjects, 255 freshmen composition students at two campuses of the California State University system, were administered instruments designed to comparatively measure the quality of students' writing, gauge…

The purpose of this booklet is to provide administrators, teachers, and students in Alberta, Canada, with samples of students' writing that exemplify the criteria used to score students' written responses on the June 1991 Grade 9 Social Studies Achievement Test. The Grade 9 Social Studies Achievement Test consisted of two parts: Part A: Multiple…