WAC Meeting Agenda
Attendance: Jean Preston, David Steege, Mark Snavely, Diane Keller, Abby Hannah, Ron Cronovich, Anne Cassidy, Ed Montanarro, Rick Matthews, Barb Short
Anticipate the second week of the month in Feb., 2010 for the next meeting.
Tuesday, December 8th
I. Approval of minutes from November 10th

https://wac.carthage.edu/)

II. WAC Assessment: Chris Renaud, Mark, and Rick met. They are going to revamp the writing assessment task force. Chris’ committee will look at student outcomes and are they benefitting from WI courses (WATF). Information as stated in our curriculum initiative previously passed will be helpful for their committee.
a. Increase student success in writing in all instructional areas;
b. Increase student learning through the use of frequent writing;
c. Investigate attitudes and anxieties about writing;
d. Insure student-instructor interaction about writing beyond the first year of college;
e. Recognize excellence in student writing.

Program assessment is the goal for this (WAC) committee. We should ask: Is the program set up ok? Are the courses fitting together? Are the courses building on one another? Do we need broad goals for the dept. that are discipline specific? Increasing the interaction of courses? Is there a pay off in the classroom for writing intensive efforts? How are specific classes contributing to discipline specific goals? What are the courses trying to achieve towards writing goals? How do faculty use writing to assess learning course materials? What are some of the techniques that instructors use improve writing for students? From the registrar’s office, how many WI courses are students taking and how is it helping student writing? How is writing intensive influencing our pedagogy of teaching?

Blind random sampling is needed but can be small for programmatic assessment. Faculty sampling, students in classes, and dept. are different groups involved in information seeking. Asking questions need some work to gain specific data and not perceptions. Student improvement is the bottom line. An electronic portfolio approach for sampling might be helpful for documentation to examine student work. There may be differences for assessing dept. goals vs. general college writing which is what is occurring now. Piloting courses each semester from a division might be useful. Seeing the feedback is important. Giving dept. options for how to achieve dept. goals and models they want to use could prove useful to gain involvement from many depts.

III. Unfinished Business

V. New Business: new arrangements will be made for the writing materials that are currently in Heritage (manuals such as Rules for Writing) to be transferred to CSS sections. Jean Preston will be coordinating with Gary Williams. Specialized pages will be added specific for Carthage students. This will start next fall. All writing intensive classes should use these materials in their class.