No less than other divisions of the college or university, contemporary writing centers find themselves within a galaxy of competing questions and demands that relate to assessment—questions and demands that usually embed priorities from outside the purview of the writing center itself. Writing centers are used to certain kinds of assessment, both quantitative and qualitative, but are often unprepared to address larger institutional or societal issues. In Building Writing Center Assessments that Matter, Schendel and Macauley start from the kinds of assessment strengths already in place in writing centers, and they build a framework that can help writing centers satisfy local needs and put them in useful dialogue with the larger needs of their institutions, while staying rooted in writing assessment theory.
The authors begin from the position that tutoring writers is already an assessment activity, and that good assessment practice (rooted in the work of Adler-Kassner, O'Neill, Moore, and Huot) already reflects the values of writing center theory and practice. They offer examples of assessments developed in local contexts, and of how assessment data built within those contexts can powerfully inform decisions and shape the futures of local writing centers. With additional contributions by Neal Lerner, Brian Huot and Nicole Caswell, and with a strong commitment to honoring on-site local needs, the volume does not advocate a one-size-fits-all answer. But, like the modeling often used in a writing consultation, examples here illustrate how important assessment principles have been applied in a range of local contexts. Ultimately, Building Writing Assessments that Matter describes a theory stance toward assessment for writing centers that honors the uniqueness of the writing center context, and examples of assessment in action that are concrete, manageable, portable, and adaptable.
BUILDING WRITING CENTER ASSESSMENTS THAT MATTER
By ELLEN SCHENDEL WILLIAM J. MACAULEYUTAH STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2012 University Press of Colorado
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-0-87421-816-9Contents
Acknowledgments.............................................................................................................................................................xiIntroduction—Yours, Mine, and Ours: Changing the Dynamics of Writing Center Assessment Ellen Schendel & William J. Macauley, Jr......................................xiii1 The Development of Scholarship about Writing Center Assessment William J. Macauley, Jr...................................................................................12 Getting from Values to Assessable Outcomes William J. Macauley, Jr.......................................................................................................253 Connecting Writing Center Assessment to Your Institution's Mission William J. Macauley, Jr...............................................................................574 Moving from Others' Values to Our Own: Adapting Assessable Outcomes from Professional Organizations and Other Programs on Your Campus Ellen Schendel.....................82INTERCHAPTER—Of Numbers and Stories: Quantitative and Qualitative Assessment Research in the Writing Center Neal Lerner..............................................1065 Integrating Assessment into Your Center's Other Work: Not Your Typical Methods Chapter Ellen Schendel....................................................................1156 Writing It Up and Using It Ellen Schendel................................................................................................................................137Afterword: Translating Assessment Brian Huot and Nicole Caswell............................................................................................................162Coda William J. Macauley, Jr. and Ellen Schendel...........................................................................................................................171Appendix: Annotated Bibliography for Writing Center Assessment William J. Macauley, Jr.....................................................................................179Index.......................................................................................................................................................................203About the Authors...........................................................................................................................................................209
Chapter One
THE DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOLARSHIP ABOUT WRITING CENTER ASSESSMENT
William J. Macauley, Jr.
After most of the writing center assessment workshops, sessions, and talks Ellen and I have done together, participants have shared their high levels of frustration with not finding scholarship to support assessing their writing centers. Coupled with the increasing assessment pressure that so many writing center directors (WCDs) are feeling, these worries have only escalated. Workshop participants have often found little scholarship on writing center assessment in the usual library databases. Another concern is that the scholarship on writing center assessment is interesting but doesn't really answer the right questions. These frustrations make writing center assessment increasingly problematic, even as the pressure mounts to develop, conduct, and complete meaningful writing center assessment.
If we step back from these particular conversations, though, this has been a field-wide issue for some time. In fact, the frustration and confusion surrounding writing center assessment has been a concern for WCDs for several decades. Back in 1982, Janice Neulieb pointed out that the first problem in evaluating a writing center is that:
there is no established method for going about the evaluation.... The director is faced with the prospect of creating a new research design that somehow anticipates all the possible questions that will be asked by those who read the finished report. (227)
This is apparently still true for many WCDs. Assuming that the concerns Ellen and I have heard directors voice are at least minimally representative, it seems as though the field has not yet overcome this problem.
In fact, because WCDs are now moving out into their campuses and participating in institutional discussions and decision making, this limitation is more frustrating and becomes a higher stakes issue for the center and its director. Inexperience with assessment also becomes "a weakness" in the director that is easier for others to see. Making the right assessment choices seems even more important now that assessment is more than a campus conversation but also a public and political one.
However, there actually is quite a bit of writing center assessment information that directors can use to educate themselves and think through their own assessment plans and procedures. Thirty years ago, Mary Lamb (1981) surveyed all of the writing centers she could find (120 at that point) in order to find out what assessment practices were most frequently in use. She identified basic counting, questionnaires, pre-/post-tests, external evaluation, and professional staff publication/ activity as the most frequent writing center assessment methods, findings that share a great deal in common with the bulk of practices we hear and read about today. A year later, Joyce S. Steward and Mary K. Croft, in The Writing Laboratory: Organization, Management, and Methods (1982), wrote:
A lab director can choose from several kinds of evaluation: internal (reactions of tutors and tutees), school or campus-wide (reactions of referring faculty and departments), and external (use of a professional consultant); and can collect data through questionnaires, surveys, interviews, discussions, and case studies. (92)
Stephen North (1984), only two years later, argued that "writing center research has not, for the most part, been formal inquiry by which we might test our assumptions. It has tended to fall, instead, into one of three categories," which North identified as "reflections on experience," "speculation," and "survey" or questionnaire-based methods (24–5). James H. Bell (2000) reiterated this critique more than a decade later: "Writing centers should conduct more sophisticated evaluations" (7, emphasis original). While North named three specific methods that seemed to dominate writing center research in the 1980s, Bell's comments in 2000 suggest that the sophistication of writing center research methods had not progressed. Reflections, speculations, and surveys may have become so familiar, so commonplace, that their appropriateness or limitations aren't even questioned anymore. And these common understandings among professionals in the field may have removed the need to explain why these methods figure so prominently in the way we track the successes of our centers and push our centers to grow and change. For the WCD trying to understand and choose assessment methods, the absence of such discussions only complicates an already significant set of challenges. Likewise, there may be little scholarship that helps even a seasoned WCD articulate the "why" behind assessment choices. This omission is especially problematic when the audience is people outside of the writing center who receive, read, or act on writing center assessment reportage.
But the field's blind spot may not be borne out of simple familiarity. A number of scholars have...
