|
Abstract DESCRIPTION OF THE PROJECT Phase 1: Spring 2005 Survey and Symposium
|
II. DESCRIPTION OF THE PROJECTThe project was conceived as two distinct but interconnected phases. Phase I, in Spring 2005, was designed to raise awareness on campus of the importance of responding to student writing, to gather initial data from faculty members about how they respond, and to discover aspects of responding to student writing about which faculty would like to learn more. The activities during this phase consisted primarily of the administration of a faculty survey and a "Symposium on Responding to Student Writing". The total funding for this phase of the project was $14,021. Phase II, in Fall 2005, was conceived as an opportunity to follow up on some of the ideas suggested at the symposium and in the survey results. This phase encompassed eight faculty-led projects that focused either on professional development within a particular department, and/or on classroom research. Throughout the entire process, we tried to find time to read and incorporate new insights from the professional literature on responding to student writing. The total funding for this phase was $19,700. In the following sections, each phase and the activities within it are described so that others who might want to replicate the project elsewhere will be able to understand the chronology and processes of this one. A. Phase 1: Spring 2005 Survey and Symposium The Survey We designed a questionnaire to gather information from SJSU faculty about their practices with regard to feedback and their opinions about which practices help students the most. In addition to the information gathering function, we also believed that the survey would serve as "advance advertising" for the Symposium a few weeks later, and might help to surface people on campus who were interested in writing, particularly feedback. In drafting the questionnaire, we looked first at an earlier questionnaire on "Faculty views of student writing" which was administered by the teacher scholars group in 2003 (Carroll et. al, 2003). We wanted to make sure that we did not reinvent the wheel and that we built productively on questions that were asked at that time. It appeared that the 2003 questionnaire focused on faculty attitudes about student writing and did not attend specifically to how faculty provide feedback, with the exception of item #11, which asked faculty whether they agree that "It is not necessary for me to correct even significant technical problems in student writing, as long as I can understand and evaluate the general ideas expressed." Eighty-eight percent of the respondents said that they either disagreed or disagreed strongly with this statement, indicating that most faculty members do correct technical problems in students' writing. The questionnaire for the new project, drafted by Henze, Gilliland, and Leih focused on faculty members' specific practices with regard to feedback and on their perception of how effective these practices are in helping students to improve their writing. Once the draft was completed, it was then piloted by several instructors in the LLD department and revised based on their feedback; finally, Henze met with Steve Aquino, Survey Research and Evaluation Specialist for the SJSU campus, to do final minor editing (See Appendix A). The questionnaire was e-mailed by Aquino to all faculty members, full and part time. We were told that there were around 1573 faculty members listed in the database. We allowed 2 weeks for completion. This resulted in a very low response rate of 97, or about 6%. At the Symposium a few weeks later, we administered a paper copy of the same questionnaire to any symposium attendees who were SJSU faculty members and had not already completed the survey. In this way, we added another 21 respondents for a total of 118, or a 7.5% return rate - still very low, but we were told that this is typical. Institutional Services then produced an analysis of the responses. A summary and commentary is found in the section on "Findings and Outcomes". The Symposium on Responding to Student Writing
The Symposium was held on April 29th, the culmination of three months of planning. It was attended by 85 people. Twenty of the attendees (24%) were from eight local community colleges and one local private high school, and 62 (73%) were SJSU faculty members. Three graduate students in Linguistics and Language Development also attended and worked as assistants in the registration area. Advertising for the Symposium was done via the Center for Faculty Development, through members of Writing Requirements Committee, and by distributing fliers in department offices. A $50 stipend was offered to the first 100 SJSU faculty members who registered, provided they agreed to attend for the whole day. Thirty-three people took advantage of this incentive. The highlights of the symposium included a keynote speech in the morning by Dr. Dana Ferris of CSU Sacramento, who is a nationally recognized expert on responding to student writing; a student panel discussing what they find effective in terms of feedback; and small group discussions led by a facilitator in which faculty discussed how they would respond to a particular sample of student writing. In addition, there was a short introduction by Rosemary Henze, a welcome by Robert Cooper, a library information update by Susan Klingberg, and a lunchtime activity to encourage networking and information sharing (see Appendix B, Symposium Program). The symposium was evaluated by analyzing the evaluation forms as well as the written notes from the small group discussions (see Appendix C, evaluation form and summary of evaluations). A brief discussion of the outcomes of the Symposium is found in the section on "Findings and Outcomes". Rationale for faculty projects Both the survey and symposium functioned in part as a needs assessment, guiding us in determining how best to maximize our resources during the implementation phases of the project (Phase 2). Our main goal in Phase 2 became "spreading the wealth" - both literally, in terms of our small funding potential, and metaphorically, in terms of encouraging faculty ownership of knowledge about responding to student writing. We learned from the survey and Symposium that faculty members who do not see themselves primarily as writing teachers need more support in order to enhance their confidence and effectiveness in responding to student writing. We also learned that peer review is a very contentious classroom practice. With strong advocates both for and against it and little evidence to support either position, faculty members had no clear guidance on how to proceed (in the symposium, Ferris came out as a strong advocate of well structured peer review, while student panelists for the most part thought it was a waste of time). Thus, we thought it would be wise to encourage classroom research on this issue to obtain greater clarity. Given these needs, we decided to use most of the funding for Phase 2 ($19,700 total) to support individual faculty projects that would do discipline-based professional development, classroom research, or both. Outreach and Application Procedure The Fall 2005 project was officially approved by Robert Cooper on August 31. Immediately afterwards, an announcement was posted to all faculty seeking applications for individual faculty members to do small projects focused on responding to student writing. Faculty were initially told they would receive a stipend of $1000, though later this was increased to $1,125. They were also told they would receive coaching by one of the project staff (see Appendix D, Application instructions and form). Outreach to potential applicants was done through multiple channels of communication. An electronic as well as hard copy application was made available. The project director worked with members of the Writing Requirements Committee to disseminate it to various departments and colleges. Susan Meyers, Dean of the College of Education, shared it with all the deans and asked them to disseminate it to chairs in their colleges. The announcement also went to the Council of Chairs, who were asked to disseminate it to faculty in their departments. It was also sent electronically to the Center for Faculty Development, with a request that it be disseminated electronically to all faculty on their mailing list. The CFD also duplicated hard copies, but too late to be used given the tight timeline. Finally, we used word of mouth and hand-delivered hard copies to departments that might have missed the earlier dissemination. While many faculty members told us that they had received multiple copies of the announcement, others were skipped over entirely despite our best efforts. For instance, a day before the deadline, we realized that no one in our own department, LLD, had received the announcement! A total of eight faculty members applied from six departments representing four colleges: Child Development (College of Education); Social Work, Social Sciences, and Communication (College of Social Sciences); Urban and Regional Planning (College of Social Work, now College of Social Sciences); Geology (College of Science). Of these eight faculty members, three were lecturers or adjunct and five were full time, tenure track faculty members. We (Gilliland, Leih, and Henze) then reviewed the applications against our original criteria published in the application announcement and decided to fund all 8 projects. Since the number was lower than the expected 10, we decided to increase the stipend from $1000 to $1,125. We also discussed and took notes on questions and suggestions we wanted to share with each of the project leaders. Coaching Each funded applicant was sent a letter of acceptance and congratulations, and was asked to get in touch with the staff person who was assigned as their coach before beginning the project. These meetings took place over the next couple of weeks, and project leaders made small revisions to their projects based on input from the coaches. Some projects asked for and received additional coaching, but everyone had at least one meeting. Human Subjects Approval To enable the funded faculty members to start immediately, the project director applied for an expedited human subjects review from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) for the whole group of projects. After a very helpful meeting with Rhea Williamson, of Graduate Studies and Research, it was decided that two complete packets should be submitted -one for the classroom research projects and one for the professional development projects. Both types of project involved the use of identifiable data from students and/or faculty. Furthermore, the project director was told that if any of the individual project directors wanted to publish the results of their project, they should seek individual approval from the IRB. To reduce delays, all the paper work except for the names and titles of projects was completed before the projects were actually funded. As soon as the names and titles were known, the two packets were submitted for IRB approval. Approval was received three weeks after submission. Meeting to share projects At the end of the semester, project leaders were invited to a two-hour lunch meeting held at a nearby restaurant with a private room. All project leaders and staff except for one were able to attend - an amazing feat given everyone's busy schedules! Project leaders each shared highlights of their projects and discussed common themes and recommendations for the future. Given that this was the only time we all met as a group, it was valuable just to have "face time" to get acquainted and hear what others had been doing. |
|
