Assessing�Student Writing

To Assess

Origin - to sit beside

Current meaning – to determine value, quality

Rubrics – what’s your reaction?

Rubrics as Guides to Assessment

• A rubric provides a vocabulary to talk about, instruct, and assess writing
• A rubric can save time and provide focused feedback
• A rubric is created based on the outcomes for student learning

Types of Rubrics for Different Purposes

• Holistic Rubric: provides overall evaluation of the entire piece. A fast, easier-to-norm approach.
• Analytic Rubric: provides a break-down by category. Gives students more detailed feedback. May be more useful for guiding student revision.
• Single Point Rubric: provides only one set of criteria—the proficiency level of performance—to set a clear benchmark for students and flexibility in assessment for instructors. 

Practice Assessing

• Look at student paper and rubric
• Read the rubric, noticing the criteria

and descriptions

• Determine where on the rubric you would place this paper and why
• Discuss in your group and come to consensus on the student’s score.

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Responding to AI

AI Detectors: They’re exceptionally unreliable. Unlike traditional plagiarism detectors (like Turnitin) that compare the student’s submission to a bank of papers, AI-detectors work by judging the (1) burstiness and (2) the perplexity of the writing.

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CWP Advice:

1. Be upfront with students about AI use in your course.
2. Engage students in the process of writing rather than just a product.
3. Analyze AI-produced writing with students.
4. Ask students to write process notes.
5. Include a STYLE category in the grading rubric.

Vonnegut’s Writing Assignment

November 30, 1965

Beloved:

…As for your term papers, I should like them to be both cynical and religious. I want you to adore the Universe, to be easily delighted, but to be prompt as well with impatience with those artists who offend your own deep notions of what the Universe is or should be. …Do not do so as an academic critic, nor as a person drunk on art, nor as a barbarian in the literary market place. Do so as a sensitive person who has a few practical hunches about how stories can succeed or fail. Praise or damn as you please, but do so rather flatly, pragmatically, with cunning attention to annoying or gratifying details. Be yourself. Be unique. Be a good editor. The Universe needs more good editors, God knows.

Since there are eighty of you, and since I do not wish to go blind or kill somebody, about twenty pages from each of you should do neatly. Do not bubble. Do not spin your wheels. Use words I know.�

This assignment is reprinted from Kurt Vonnegut: Letters, edited by Dan Wakefield.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2012/11/kurt_vonnegut_term_paper_assignment_from_the_iowa_writers_workshop.html

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Responding to

 Student Writing

Responding to student writing is an opportunity for a conversation between two writers where the more experienced writer supports and encourages the other writer through the process of composing effective communication.

What is the purpose of responding to student writing?

Sample Responses

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It’s How You Say It

“The best kind of commentary enhances the writer’s feeling of dignity. The worst kind can be experienced as dehumanizing and insulting – often to the bewilderment of the teacher, whose intentions were kindly but whose techniques ignored the personal dimension of writing.” ​

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Bean and Melzer 2021, Engaging Ideas, p. 298

Grading Efficiently

Ending: How to Survive the Grading Load?

• Norming Sessions
• Use of model papers
• Adapt rubrics
• Keep running records of general �themes to address
• Allow for ambiguity

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