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wb15 1/28/2010 14:01:13

General Session - Conference Presentation Only (no formal paper)

//Mike Bode, Owens Community College, Toledo, Ohio, USA, michael_bode@owens.edu// //Sarah Rodgers, Owens Community College, Toledo, Ohio, USA, sarah_rodgers@owens.edu//
 * Distance Collaboration for Consensus on Writing Assessment Evaluation**

As writing instructors, we see a need for establishing grading “norms” or benchmarks, and our college, like most, has a need to show certain student outcomes are being met. With few opportunities for full-time and part-time faculty to physically get together to work, Blackboard shells and their tools (surveys, discussion board forums, and WIKIs) provide a perfect environment to work collaboratively in order to establish agreed upon expectations in student writing.

Recently, we have facilitated a series of fourteen online “webshops” involving both full- and part-time faculty in four- and six-week sessions that examined examples of student writing and faculty responses to that writing. Faculty used WIKIs to collaborate on assignment descriptions for a variety of typical Composition assignments and then commented publicly (anonymously, if desired) on student writing samples via discussion boards. Surveys were also used to indicate approximate letter grade responses to essays, and then faculty discussed survey results with the hope of reaching consensus.

We feel this approach can be used for any discipline that requires student writing to be evaluated and where there is a need for faculty to agree upon the standards with which they evaluate student work. Our roundtable will explain the procedure we followed to provide this efficient means of faculty development and the learning community that it created, as well as address the value of establishing “norms” in this way.

All Audiences collaboration assessment WIKI discussion board