Writing Communication: Assessing Both Students and Programs

Engineering programs must demonstrate that their graduates have an ability to communicate effectively. Assessment of this outcome occurs at two levels: assessing students' writing abilities and assessing a program's effectiveness in developing their abilities. The paper gives an overview of the two forms of assessment and gives examples of each. The paper then advocates assessment tools that can serve for both student assessment (grading) and program assessment. The most effective grading tools are those that emphasize clearly defined writing objectives, substantially improve student writing, and permit the evaluation of a program's effectiveness in achieving this improvement. The key to assessing something as subjective as “good writing" is a set of detailed writing expectations. These expectations should be developed by the program, with their implementation divided among those courses which have been assigned a writing component. The paper give examples of such expectations, which are termed “grade descriptors," in course writing assignments. Clearly defined expectations provide students with clear writing objectives and make grading papers far easier than with a more subjective, heuristic grading approach. More importantly, however, these expectations can become a means of improving student writing while assessing both students and programs.