FYC Assessment & Retention Remixed

Inviting students into education through writing

"I only cared about writing a good paper":  Expectation hell-bent on collision

Ron Christiansen

The pleasure of student voice in creating a community space

Brittany Stephenson

Trickster Crossroads:  The WC as research collaborator

Clint Gardner

Retention and Writing Instruction: Pegeen Powell's recent CCCs article

 "I argue that composition faculty are especially well positioned to participate in the conversations about retention. The unique context of the writing classroom as the interface between students' past and future educational experiences, as the introduction to the discourse practices of higher education, and as one of the only universal requirements at most institutions makes a prime site for retention efforts" (Powell 669). 

Listening to student voicesThe point is not to reduce the complexities of writing to a sorting out of personal influences and politics, but to suggest that writers deal not only with codes but with people, not only with genres but situations. The culture does speak to us, and perhaps even through us, but its discourses and commonplaces are heard through and inflected by the voices of individuals. This argues for the power of inviting students of writing to see themselves not simply as taking on a set of discursive strategies or conventions, as entering into a kind of abstract discourse, but also as responding to what other real people—writers, teachers, classmates—have had to say to them, as building on the projects of some individuals and arguing against those of others. At the same time, it still seems to me crucial that we recognize certain ways of speaking which cannot be located in individuals, but belong, as it were, to the culture as a whole or to certain discourses within it: what a student or teacher can say, what a man or a woman can say, what a literary critic or a composition theorist can say.  All these and many more roles are determined by habits, traditions, and expectations that go well beyond the power of any individual to change or transform. It is for me precisely in that tension—between the voice of an individual and the demands of the discourse of which she is a part—that much of the interest of teaching writing lies.  (Harris, "A Teaching Subject") 

Unpredictable path of writing assessment

Nancy Sommers, in her groundbreaking longitudinal work with undergraduate writers, insists that “to reduce four years of college to a series of outcomes…is to find ourselves, in the current culture of assessment, to be asked to measure something that we do not know how to interpret. We might be able to count the grammatical and stylistic errors students make when they arrange their alphabets, but we have not determined how to measure the unpredictable and uneven path of writing development.”

Overview of the studies: Painting the Picture of the Community College

Student• 2007 Assessment• Student Retention and Success: An Ethnographic Study of

English 1010 (2007-2008)• First-Year Composition Assessment and Retention

Remixed: Inviting Students into Education through Writing (2009-2010)

  Bookends of assessment

Student Writing Center actions• Podcasts introducing writing courses• Specific outreach to composition students

At a Glance: Student Survey52% of students were first year students17% of students have been at SLCC 5 or more semesters60% of students graduated from high school in 2004 or earlier18% of students graduated from high school in 200755% of students work 31 or more hours per week29% of students work between 11 and 30 hours per week58.7% of students were part-time students41.3% of students were full-time students35% of students spent 3 or fewer hours per week doing homework for English 101052% of students spent between 4 and 6 hours per week doing homework   7% of students visited the Student Writing Center

At a Glance: By the numbers

1893 students were enrolled in English 1010 in spring 2008

19.6% of students received D's E’s7.8% of students withdrewIn other words 27.7% of students (approximately 525) did not successfully complete English

Misperceptions of Preparedness

Students

9-10 30.5%

7-8 42.7%

6 9.7%

5 or below 17.1%

Instructors

9-10 0%

7-8 19%

6 50%

5 or below 19%

Student profilesThe unexpected community college student • Michael and Gabriella who both have

parents working at a university and turned down reduced tuition for smaller class sizes at the community college

Older student as outsider • Rex: Younger student have so much

energy, happy to see their friends. I don't have energy. I’m not excited…coimpletely opposite. I don’t have the common interest. I do not  have the friend base.

• Shauri: When I hear the word community I don't even think of school. I think of my neighborhood, my house.

Over-qualified yet nervous• Shauri: overseas experience, life-long

learner, wants to write children's books--yet indicated a "9" for fear on both scales. Illiterate father. 

The Consumer or Seeking a one night stand• Jon: I don’t’ want to. I’m not involved. I

don’t want to be involved with SLCC.  I don’t care, many student don’t care about the Bruin Bytes, a basketball game because it is a community college. 

• Jon: professors should recruit me to these clubs

Never been educated• Nina: I was raised overseas in a cult;

didn’t go to high school. Then I left the cult. So I hadn’t been in schools...Got married. Moved around in the military. Then my grandparents decided it was time to do something.

• Jeff: I didn't really go to high school and part of me is glad because I didn't want to be indoctrinated. (a summary as I can't find where he talks about this)

Student profilesNaively innocent• Nina: I didn’t know anything. I showed

up here on the first day of classes. Then they were like "you have to actually register for classes" so I went back home. 

• Nina: they passed out a syllabus and I was like what in the hell is that. I needed someone to walk me through it. 

Religiously Conservative & Politically Affronted 

• Jon: We are told to think the opposite of what we are taught [at home]. I get annoyed with that. People say that’s too conservative to think like that, [that we are] supposed to be more open ended, they believe everything in science. Global warming. I don’t want to write on that. Some teachers want to slap me across the face. But I’m sorry I believe it’s a hoax. 

• Jon: I found that I was a little more on the conservative background. I’m a Christian.  Many teachers seem to have the more liberal, the more scientific view. I'm not saying it’s wrong in any shape or form...Felt like I was in a battle at times. 

Reluctant graduate or the careerist• Nina: I just took a bunch of diversity

courses because I didn't want to do the testing

• Jeff: has made a career out of the CC--starting clubs, approaching school paper to write a series, several certificates

It's for ME• Shauri (interview): I’m at a point in

my life where it would have been nice to please my parents because none of them went to college, but that’s not the issue anymore. I have nothing to prove. It’s for me. 

Amateur Writers• Jon: lots of writing on conservative

blogs, FB• Jeff: satire, ideas for writing projects

like the info gap articles about SLCC

Student profiles20 something with experience

• Nate: I have ambition. I'm tired of my job and working where I am. It's a great motivation to get through school. 

• Tim: I used to write to my own audience. It makes you feel good to be validated. Now I try to write from a different angle. Instead of this is how I grew up and this is what I think. We are think we are right...Most of my family is conservative, I'm conservative. [but] I lived up there [Washington] for awhile. It gave me a new perspective. Really opened my mind.

• Nate:  My metaphor is climbing a long rope then cutting it to get free. Like a rope attached to a balloon or something. SLCC is like the balloon itself. It's my way out of Utah.

CCSSE Demographics

• Almost 50% of the undergraduate students in public colleges and universities in the U.S. are now enrolled in community colleges

• Typically older than the traditional 18 to 22-year-old college student: the average community college student is 29

• Jobs and families: 31% of survey respondents have children living at home, 57% work more than 20 hours a week. Most are financially independent of their parents

• 44% of surveyed students report that lack of finances would be a likely or very likely cause for them to drop out of college

CCSSE:  Varied and multiple goals

• 51% of survey respondents indicate that their primary goal is to transfer to a four-year college or university

• However, 58% say their primary goal is to obtain an associate degree 

• 12% are taking classes at more than one institution simultaneously, and 25% have already earned some kind of postsecondary credential – a vocational certificate or an associate, bachelor's, or graduate degree 

• Almost two-thirds (63%) attend college part-timeo 31% have children living at homeo 57% work more than 20 hours a weeko Most are financially independent of their parentso 44% of surveyed students report that lack of finances

would be a likely or very likely cause for them to drop out of college

Default Gate-keeping

As Tom Fox argues in Defending Access: A critique of standards in higher education, "as writing teachers, we are institutionally positioned to gatekeep, to do harm. To create access we must go against the grain" (qtd in Powell 670).

As Jeffrey Klausman, a writing program administrator at Whatcom Community College, says “I like the phrase ‘invited into their education,’ as it is in keeping with both with the community college mission and with my view of the function of the first-year writing courses (gate-openers rather than gate-keepers). But who is it that we are inviting in? And by what means?”  (35)

CCSSE:  Despite the challenges, high degree of satisfaction

o Ninety-four percent would recommend their college to a friend or family member

o 86% rate their overall educational experience at the college as good or excellent

o 70% indicate that their college provides the support they need to succeed at the college either "quite a bit" or "very much."

o By contrast only 45% feel that they are able to get the financial support they need to afford their education 

Through the Front Door

"It is extremely significant that at the very schools where higher education is the most accessible, graduation rates are the most dismal...studies conducted...suggest that tacit, and in some cases, very subtle, exclusionary dynamics are at work inside even the most accessibile colleges." (Cox)

"The dangers of using raw retention rates as an indicator of success: retention could then dictate access" (Astin qtd in Powell 672).

SLCC Student Writing Center

• Multi-departmental• Multi-faceted staff• Highly divergent students• Collaborative with student, departmental, and institutional

goals.

WC as community

 "Advocates tend to view social constructionism as a liberatory philosophy in emphasizing the decentralization of power within education--moving power away from the control of any one individual--teacher/student/tutor--and giving it to the group." (Murphy)

"Fostering writerly identity is not our ultimate goal; it is how those identities participate in a writing center community of practice that is most important....participants in a community of practice must be engaged in activities that are meaningful and must have ways of talking about those experiences, that there must be a way of 'talking about...shared historical and social resources...that can sustain mutual engagement in action,' that participants' competence must be recognized, and that there must be 'a way of talkinga bout how learning changes who we are and creates personal histories of becoming in the context of our communities.'" (Geller et al)

Foundational assumptions about writing centers

Essential conflict

Writing centers as places supportive of curriculum and the institutions

Writing centers as radical places that transform curriculum and the institution

A brief history of contentedness

"Today institutional identity is a hot topic, as writing centers attempt to situate themselves in relation to the classroom, writing programs, and institutional cultures.  For early centers, this concern was not nearly as pressing, but it begins to surface by the 1940s.  In the 1930s...articles on the Minnesota and Iowa labs seem content to present them as part of the larger writing program and, because they served all students, are not concerned with the stigma of being perceived as remedial facilities.  Their identity, rather, is vested in the difference between classroom and individual instruction."  (Carino)

The writing center & its discontents"What is available to the writing center community is the radical idea (institutionally at least) of acknowledging and articulating the ways that writing center discourse, as pragmatic and as contextually aware as it is, creates knowledge that is valid.  This understanding of knowledge can be used to replace the modernist/disciplinary, theory/practice dyads witha more flexible, pragmatic understanding of contradiction as acceptable and responsible."  (Hobson)

"We still pride ourselves on our capacity for providing an alternative to mass education:  to epistemological conformism within disciplines and courses, to teacher (expert) centrality, to assessment by measureable oucomes, to replicable pedagogics, to the thorough fixation on the isolated mind that above all characterizes the modern philosophy of education."  (Riley)

Smashing tradition    "When writing centers work like they're supposed to, they encourage the intellect of the undergraduate writer in ways that either ignore these principles or subvert them:  expertise is less important than personal engagement, for instance; cognitive 'measurements' are usually abandoned entirely.  Because our principles are different, the established university culture has difficulty recognizing what writing centers do.  Thus we are often regarded with suspicion by alert traditionalists and by administrators who are unable to rethink the notion of 'productivity.'" (Riley)

Writing center as (not)home"It is evident in writing center research and lore that having a 'homey' writing center is not unique, nor is it accidental.  Professionals in the field created friendly centers, or what they imagined were friendly centers, for conscious reasons--they did not want to be that other, scary, institutional lab for remedial students, they wanted students to feel welcome, and they felt like one big family.  Writing Centers wanted to assure students that nothing harmful would be done to them upon entering--the centers were less doctor's office or science lab and more like any old living room."  (McKinney)

Displaced classroom practice"Thinking of writing as a social, collaborative act implies some changes in the way we teach and learn writing.  One implied change is that we find ways to put into classroom practice the principle that writing is a displaced form of conversation, and its corollary that learning to write and to make judgments as a writer is a displaced form of conversation about writing....collaborative learning teachers create conditions in which students engage in conversation, both face-to-face conversation and conversation displaced into writing."  (Bruffee, A Short Course in Writing)

Proof is in the Wordle (pudding)

 

"Trickster at the table""Historically, the western intellectual tradition teaches us to gravitate toward certainty and to strive for Truth instead of valuing those moments when the foundations of our truths are rocked--those moments when Trickster plays with our sense of perceptions.  The transformative potential of Trickster moment is not purely in Trickster's actions or intentions, however.  Rather, the possibility of learning and of being transformed by such moments lies in what sense we make of that flash of vision the Trickster moment gives us of ourselves, our convictions about who we are, what the world is and how and why it is just that way."  (Geller et al, Everyday Writing Center)

Trickster in the hall• The Writing Center can serve as

a collaborative partner in its institutional context and with classroom instruction.

• Classroom instruction can be informed by writing center theory and practice, and the writing center can be informed by work in the classroom.  

• We learn from conversations with our mutual students.

•  Writing centers should be the locus of experimentation and exploration for writing programs.

IntersectionsHow does a writing center construct itself within an institution?

How is the writing center constructed by the institution?

How does writing center theory construct the classroom, especially the writing classroom?

Hell-bent on collision

"It was not the classroom dynamics per se that mattered, as much as student's perceptions of the classroom dynamics" (Cox 117)

Who owns the learning?

"In fact, English classrooms may be the site that best illuminates the pedagogical disconnects, because so often the goal is for students to take on authority" (Cox 90). Jeff: well yeah I lacked the vocab to speak on the technical level therefore I feel like the teacher needs to come down to my level bec I’m the one being taught your know because she already knows she’s talking about. She needs to come down to my level to figure out what I’m talking about. And likewise I will learn the vocab over time but I can’t answer the questions using a complex syntax.

Writing and RetentionIf writing correlates with engagement over any other factor, why isn’t retention 95% in English 1010? Richard Light’s study, “Writing and Students’ Engagement,” surveyed 365 undergraduates about their time commitment, intellectual challenge, and personal engagement in all of their courses. The amount of writing correlated with higher student engagement; in fact, the correlation was stronger than any other characteristic in the course. Writing is different: Maybe part of the problem is because, as one instructor put it, students believe that “if I fix what the teacher says I should get an A.” That is students are well aware of how different writing classes are but they believe it’s unfair, subjective, and ultimately should be more like other classes.  

Exploring cognitive dissonance

• Teacher/Student• Student/Institution• Teacher/Institution• Writing Center/Students

/Teacher

• Dissonance is not necessarily negative

• The clash instigates learning, and exploring the clash is where learning takes place

• We may run from dissonance, but we should work to understand it

• We must explicitly define learning and expose the need for cognitive dissonance

Teachers and Institutional pressure

When teachers are pressured to increase access but uphold standards: "Not only did teachers speak of the tension between open access and standards; they also revealed the lack of organizational support for dealing with that dichotomy. The administration suggested that faculty should maintain high standards while at the same time retaining students, but teachers did not know how to do both" (Cox 150)

Let's trickster this: Instead of resisting administration let's get involved, let's bring forth (as we do here) student voices

Avoiding Cognitive Dissonance: do what the teacher wants

"In composition courses...'the get it over' strategy seriously undermined that learning opportunity. For instance Linda's approach to revising her essays consisted of carefully making every change that her teacher recommended...when Linda admitted...that she tried to incorporate changes into her papers even when she didn't understand them, I asked whether she ever asked her teacher to explain those comments. 'I never [pause] no...I just correct them and I just get it over and get it accepted...I don't plan to be an English major'" (Cox 76). Gabriela's experience

Avoiding cognitive dissonance: drop out

I dropped an English 1010 classs. The first one wasn't good…he would lecture about concepts about writing and I felt like the concept was always distant, and it was not connected to me at all. Where as in my current class on the first day we used the "They say I say" book. She gave us a template and we started writing. She didn’t tell us the concepts but made us write, write every day. We are already participating in the concepts whereas my first exp there was this distant concept and now I’m going to put it in some big 5 page paper. Without practicing it. but we write something every day.

Jeff, focus group

Engaging cognitive dissonance I’ve come to understand that in a lot of my classes the teacher's personal point of view comes out. In my 2010 course he talked about the guidelines of the profile. He was talking about people who are more entertainers than…and he took a jab at Glenn Beck…that he doesn’t speak the truth. You know a lot of dems think that. I can just hear it , the tone. Teachers don’t divulge a lot. On the flip side of it in communications 1010…he is very conservative but he always uses Obama as an exp of a great public speaker. So you have these times when you can pick out what a teacher thinks and if you say something against that there is like this immediate rebuttal. Such as my philosophy class talking about the three concepts of god—all powerful, all knowing…omnipresent, omniscient…theoretically he was saying how can it be all three things? I rebuttled him [snaps fingers] and he immediately slammed that down, tarnished it.

 Jon, Focus Group

Access and Retention: Learning from those who fail

"Those of us who argue for improving access to higher education must...take seriously the research on who persists and who does not. Even those composition scholars who do not count access as a priority should consider their responsibilities to the students in their classroom who will not graduate. Students like Connor, George, and Carrie may never walk across the stage in a cap and gown, but they still have a lot to teach us about who we are and what it is we are trying to do" (679 Powell).

Relationship between teacher and student

Jeff's comment on voice

Michael: initially freaked out, afraid of professors but later found they were pretty cool

Tim: relaxed ambiance, whole class talking about movies 

Amy's experience with her teacher

 "Let's be honest. You write for the teacher." (Shauri, interview)

Peer Review• Students are generally frustrated by the inability of peers to

respond to writing.• Students are often uncertain why or how to engage in peer review.• With notable exceptions, instructors are generally not providing

thorough instruction on peer review.• Disengaged or intimidated students often resist participation in peer

response.• Even students who received instruction, often struggled with peer

response.• Engaged students resolve problems with peer groups by identifying

other students who are engaged and exchange papers with them.• Student's don't often perceive peer response as "real work"

 We need to find better ways of teaching peer review. WC offers a good model

Fear

"I think some people are intimidated by their professors because they control the grades. And they don't want to look like a fool...." (Cox) "Countless times in my research, I spoke to students who were reluctant to seek professor's assistance, even after the professor explicityly invited them to do so. What was most confusing was that such hesitance did not reflect a disregaud for the course or indifference to doing well. Instead, on one for or another of fear-induced logic--like Elisa's protest that her professor would know how far behind she was on her paper if she were to seek help" (Cox)

Fear

1st semester group

Starting college

English 1010

Amy 10 8

Nate 4 4

Gabriella Did not respond

Did not respond

Shauri 9 9

Michael 8 8

3rd + semester group

Starting college

English 1010

Jonathan 8 3

Rex Did not respond

Did not respond

Jeff 7 4

Tim 5 5

Nina 10 10

Hearing Student voices

"...too much research on retention focuses on predictors of student success or failure, rather than explanations" (Powell 673).

Works cited    Bruffee, Kenneth A.  A Short Course in Writing, 3rd ed.  Boston, MA:  Little, Brown & Compnany, 1985.    Carino, Peter.  "Early Writing Centers:  Toward a History."  Writing Center Journal.  15.2 (1995). 103-15. Print.    Cox, Rebecca D. The College Fear Factor:  How Students and Professors Misunderstand Each Other.   Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2009.  Print     Geller, Anne Ellen et al.   The Everyday Writing Center:  A Community of Practice.  Logan, Utah:  Utah State P, 2007.  Print.    Harris, Joseph.  A Teacher Subject:  Composition Since 1966.  Upper Saddle River, NJ:  Prentice Hall, 1997.  Print     Hobson, Eric H. "Writing Center Practice Often Coutners Its Theory.  So What?"  Intersections:  Theory-Practice in Writing Centers.  ed by Joan A. Mullin and Ray Wallace.  Urbana, Illinois:  NCTE Press, 1994. 1-10.  Print.     Klausman, Jeffrey.  "Mapping the Terrain:  the two-year Writing Program Administrator."  TETYC:  2008. Web.     McKinney, Jackie Grutsch.  "Leaving Home Sweet Home:  Towards Critical Readings of Writing Centers Spaces."  Writing Center Journal.  25.2 (2005).  6-20.  Print.    Murphy, Christina.  "The Writing Center and Social Constructionist Theory."  Intersections:  Theory-Practice in Writing Centers.  ed by Joan A. Mullin and Ray Wallace.  Urbana, Illinois:  NCTE Press, 1994. 25-38.  Print.    Powell, Pegeen Reichert.  "Retention and Writing Instruction:  Implications for Access and Pedagogy. College Composition and Communication, 60: 4, June 2009. 664-682.  Print.      Riley, Terrance.  "The Unpromissing Future of Writing Centers."  Writing Center Journal.  15.1(1994). 20-34.  Print.

PhotographyChicago Daily News Photographer.  "Robert Emmet School, classroom with children sitting at desks, looking toward teacher."  Library of Congress American Memory.  1911.  Web.  3 March 2010. Clark, Jeff.  "big kids' toys." flickr.  Web.  3 March 2010.

Gardner, Clint.  "As good a place as any."  flickr. Web. 4 March 2010.--"Summer School No. 1" flickr.  Web. 3 March 2010. kenjonbro, "Collision on a hill."  flickr.  Web.  3 March 2010.

Knoth, Matt.  "Trickster Goddess."  flickr.  Web.  3 March 2010.

Rhodes, Harry Mellon. "Car Wreck."  Library of Congress American Memory.  1911.  Web.  3 March 2010. "Writing Center (without Writing Center)."  Wordle.  Web.  4 March 2010 .

Audio Back-up

Tim: my day was completely opposite. In my class the teacher was having a discussion with the class about their favorite movies. Not just the one students who always talk and the teacher. Always though The whole class was talking. Immediately felt relaxed completely natural: “ok we are in class now so let’s talk about English” When she got to talking about the syllabus it was like “I can handle this” the overall ambiance of the course from the beg made it better for me.