Assessing Basic Writers: Perceptions, Expectations, and Agency. Occasional Paper No. 56

If assessment is about improving learning and facilitating better teaching through research and helping students learn what higher education purports to value, then the often-invisible institutional barriers that do not always embrace the ways in which classroom assessment can teach an institution about student learning within individual courses--and even individual sections of courses--need to be examined. This occasional paper focuses upon connections between institution-level and classroom practice as related to basic writers and basic writers' perceptions of agency, assessment, and their own writing. While faculty in higher education consistently lament inadequate student writing, this paper explores whether students are even aware that their writing is an issue. The paper explores if institutions would benefit from asking students what they understand of and think about the ways in which their writing is assessed, or if they are even aware that their writing is being measured against a set of criteria or learning outcomes. In other words, should composition specialists engage with students to better understand their perceptions of how their writing is assessed? And would this sort of investigation be a productive means to help students succeed? By asking a group of basic writing students what they thought and how they felt about the ways in which their writing was evaluated, the paper explores student agency in the writing process and argues that instructors will need to design their courses--including those that use remote teaching technologies--in ways that strengthen individualized student-to-teacher interaction and see students as individuals with unique strengths, challenges, and perceptions.