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Engaging Today's Students with the Liberal Arts |
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Sophomore Writing Portfolio Pilot Study Cornell College |
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With our ACM/Mellon grant, we explored the possibility of adding a sophomore writing portfolio requirement to Cornell's writing program, based on the model used at Carleton College. Our exploration began in fall 2003, when members of the Cornell Writing Program Advisory Committee (WPAC) and interested faculty and staff visited Carleton. Carol Rutz, the Director of the Carleton Writing Program, arranged for us to meet with at least 15 faculty members, several Writing Center staff members, and a dozen students. We discovered that there was a great amount of excitement for the portfolio there, and we learned about the logistics of administering such a program. We concluded that something similar to Carleton's portfolio requirement would have several advantages in the Cornell context, including the potential to help bring coherence to what can seem like a fractured educational experience on the block plan. It could also enable faculty to see what kinds of writing opportunities students were having which could lead to improved instruction; and, depending on the portfolio requirements, it could encourage students to embrace the liberal arts, taking a variety of courses in their first two years. We thought it would fit particularly well as a follow up to our introductory writing course which students now take in the first year, and which students can opt to take in a variety of disciplines. In a preliminary way, we surveyed Cornell faculty and found that there was a significant amount of interest in a portfolio requirement. We gained the endorsement of Cornell's curricular review committee for a small-scale sophomore portfolio pilot study (SPPS) to be conducted in 2004/05. In June 2004, WPAC hosted a two-day seminar for writing program faculty to discuss the objectives for the writing program, hone activities for teaching writing, and generate criteria for student portfolios to be used in the pilot study. Participants discussed Carleton's portfolio criteria at length, and adapted these to suit Cornell. By discussing what we wanted to see in student writing at the sophomore level, we generated a list of criteria that the portfolios should meet. In fall 2005, we recruited 59 student participants, 22 (37%) of whom would complete the pilot study over the next several months. These student volunteers were asked each to compile a portfolio that included 3-5 papers completed during the first two years of college, representing the kinds of writing done in at least two of three divisional groupings (Arts & Humanities; Social Sciences; Mathematics and Natural Sciences), and illustrating a required set of specific writing skills (e.g., ability to analyze complex information). The portfolio would also include a 2-page introductory essay outlining the student's development as a college writer. The portfolio, including the introductory essay, would total no more than 30 pages. Using terminology borrowed from Carleton, each portfolio would be designated "Needs Work," "Pass," or "Exemplary" by faculty readers. The student group who completed the project was not representative of the sophomore class in that it was predominately female (20/22) and had a slightly higher average g.p.a. than the sophomore class. However, they provided us with a set of sample portfolios to assess, in order to get a sense of the benefits and pitfalls of a larger scale requirement. Some of the portfolios provided particularly interesting challenges. One, for example, included computer code; another included writing in only one discipline. On January 27th and 28th 2005, in a session led by Dr. Rutz, twenty members of the Cornell faculty and staff met to assess the portfolios, for which they received a small stipend. We had broad faculty participation, from all divisions and multiple disciplines of the college-politics, psychology, biology, art, classics, English, education, languages, history, computer science, and physical education-as well as the participation of library consultants and the Writing Studio co-directors. We developed assessment criteria, read two sample portfolios together and discussed where our assessments converged and diverged, and then individually assessed the remaining portfolios. Each portfolio received at least two readings. We were delighted to discover that the criteria we had developed had encouraged students to submit papers from a broad spectrum of classes and disciplines. Students received faculty comments as well as an overall score. This event was highly successful and received positive feedback from the participants. In addition to providing us with ways that the assessment process and portfolio criteria could be refined, the conversations were exciting. We could see what kinds of writing our students were encountering, and talk about where we differed in our expectations of student work. As one participant wrote: "I enjoyed and appreciated the opportunity to see work students are producing for other faculty members classes and reading their assignments. This seems like a rare opportunity at Cornell." Faculty members walked away with new ideas for assignments and courses. Through this workshop, participants learned a great deal about the uses of student portfolios generally, and about how to administer an effective portfolio program. Not incidentally, faculty also learned that reading student portfolios is not like grading papers, and with an effective session leader like Dr. Rutz, was both fun and enlightening. Faculty development, as well as the development of assessment tools, would be especially exciting outcomes of a college-wide requirement. We also garnered refinements to the process from surveys of student recruits. We found, for example, that the biggest factor that influenced withdrawal from the project was students' perception that they did not have time due to other school-related commitments. A full-fledged project would need to help students with time management and perhaps provide time in the academic calendar to adequately prepare their portfolios on "the block plan." Although we need to learn more about student attitudes and the benefits for students at Cornell, it seems reasonable to predict that as faculty learn more from one another about developing creative and effective writing assignments, students would have more and better opportunities to do writing within the curriculum. It became clear, too, that a portfolio requirement would fit nicely with our first-year writing courses; over time, we would be able to see how our writing classes correlated with successful portfolios, so that these courses too could be improved. This study affirmed our sense that a portfolio requirement at Cornell would provide students and faculty with a valuable addition to the curriculum. However, we learned that such a program would need considerably more human resources than we currently have available. The co-directors of the study (John Gruber-Miller and Michelle Mouton) each put in time and labor in the last year that was more than equivalent to that which goes into a full course. In addition, the support provided by the Writing Studio staff was invaluable and extensive, and work study students contributed to the clerical work involved. Some of this labor would not need to be duplicated, since we now have a wonderful set of documents and processes with which to work; but updating and distribution of materials, organizing informational and work sessions for students, providing resources to support student writing, tracking students' submissions, and organizing the assessment session, all take considerable time and energy. Much of Carleton's success is clearly due to large grant and institutional support, and to the fact that the college has an energetic and highly professionalized Director of the Writing Program who largely oversees this requirement. Cornell is currently looking at the possibility of having a Director of the Writing Program, which could make this shift in our writing program possible. We are also looking into support from other grants. In any case, strong institutional support would be critical to its implementation and success on a larger scale. We have two events planned in order to keep the momentum behind this project going through next fall. On June 6-7, 2005, WPAC will host an in-house workshop for writing program faculty where the keynote speaker will be Dr. Paula Garrett, Director of Millsaps College Writing Program, who has worked extensively with their portfolio program. In fall, we wish to offer lunch and a small stipend to departments to get together to talk about writing in their departments, about how their departments' writing assignments might provide contributions to the sophomore portfolios. We should be able to use information gathered in these sessions to further adapt this program to Cornell's needs, and we will be able to encourage writing across the college. Michelle Mouton, Co-Director of SPPS; Assistant Professor of English
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