"Transforming WAC Through a Discourse-Based Approach to University Outcomes Assessment"

Bean, John C., David Carrithers, and Theresa Earenfight. “Transforming WAC Through  a Discourse-Based Approach to University Outcomes Assessment.” The WAC Journal 16 (2005): 5-21.

This article reflects on the intersection of two lines of development at Seattle University: a WAC movement that began in the late ‘80s but continued only through pockets of WAC “converts,” and a new call for assessment voiced by the board through a strategic plan.  The primary reason these two strands came together was the engagement of Barbara Walvoord, an assessment consultant with deep roots in WAC practices.  The authors, a WAC luminary, a history professor, and a finance professor, report on the ways that a focus on assessing student outcomes reinvigorated WAC at the university.

Walvoord’s notion of assessment centers on “the course-embedded assignment and on the professional expertise of the individual professor” (6-7).  In her model, professors design assessment rubrics that can be used to identify requisite skills, reveal patterns in student work, and generate material that departments  can use in refining their pedagogy and programs. At the college level, the most common types of assessments are papers or presentations, so her approach has a built-in connection to WAC. 

The article describes two cases in which Walvoord’s approach to outcomes assessment brought WAC principles to the forefront in the history and finance departments.  In these cases, the department identified important skills a student must have upon graduation (e.g., think and speak like a historian, negotiate an ill-defined problem such as retirement investment and offer a solution to lay clients) and then used written assessments to determine student abilities in these areas.  Both cases revealed gaps in regarding vital skills related to invention in the form of critical thinking, rhetorical moves such as discourse-appropriate language and purposeful visual composing, and so on.  In both cases, the department identified a need for additional instruction in rhetoric and composition skills in required courses within the major.  In other words, both assessments brought WAC to the center of the curriculum.

I found this article very useful because of its connections to my situation.  Seattle University’s independent status allowed it to avoid for many years the assessment movement that has swept the nation’s academic institutions, just as my independent school has done.  And just as occurred at SU, my school has been feeling its way toward assessment of student outcomes, but the faculty resists standardized tests as shallow and even harmful assessments of student learning.  Further, much of our faculty, like theirs, guards its autonomy, class time, and principles closely, perceiving standardized tests as threats to all of these.  And like SU, my school has at least the potential to be a culture in which faculty genuinely wants to know its own strengths and areas for growth and does not fear having its weaknesses revealed.  For these reasons the authors’ defense of “discourse-based” assessments as opposed to psychometric ones helps me see a path toward outcomes assessment that contributes to students’ learning and teachers’ development instead of interfering with what is really important in the classroom.  For these reasons, I recommend the article to academic leaders (especially those who value composition) looking for a value-added way to assess outcomes.