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Brief Overview of HSU Writing Assessment Fall 2007

This assessment was a direct, inductive analysis of student work. A random selection of papers written for the February 2007 GWPE administration was evaluated, independent of the GWPE rubric and scores, at a September 2007 writing assessment workshop. Eight groups of faculty and staff evaluators, a total of sixteen readers, each reached consensus on their categorization of a dozen papers as “average/adequate,” “weak,” or “strong.” The evaluators then did a trait analysis of the student work in the “weak” and “strong”
categories, in order to identify the characteristics of student writing most in need of improvement. The traits identified as most common and most troubling tended to be large global problems: lack of focus, development, and thoughtfulness.

Analysis of Writing Assessment Results [PDF]