Results of the Faculty Writing Survey
In Fall 2000 we conducted a survey, with the help of the Office of Institutional Assessment, to find out how much writing was being assigned at Boise State, and what kinds. Our purpose was to begin to understand what kinds of support faculty and students need when dealing with writing assignments. Somewhat fewer than 600 surveys went out to all tenure-track faculty, and 263 were returned. The following are the questions we asked, the results we obtained, and some reflections on what they mean to us.
1. Do you assign writing, formal or informal, in your courses?
Course level Response frequency Percent 100 119 63.30 200 124 62.94 300 161 75.94 400 166 81.37 500 138 77.09 The total of all respondents who report that they use writing at some class level is 256; the total who use no writing at any level, 7. Assuming that those faculty who use writing would tend to answer the survey, and those who don't would tend not to, 256 may give us a pretty reliable figure for those who use writing a little more than 25% of the tenured and tenure-track faculty. They represent 44 different departments and programs in the university.
2. For classes in which you don't assign writing, why don't you assign it?
The number of responses to all options was so low, the results are not significant enough to report. The only responses that showed up on the radar at all were "My classes are too large (25 responses, 9.51) and "Writing is irrelevant for this course" (55 responses, 20.91).3. What do you see as the top three reasons for having students write?
When we ran a pilot of the survey, we asked our respondents to check any items in question 3 that applied. Most of them checked everything. That, of course, told us nothing. We revised the question, asking respondents only to check the top three reasons for assigning writing. The change resulted in a clear ranking of priorities.
Reason Response frequency Percent Helps students think critically 203 77.19 Helps students understand subject 177 67.30 Improves general writign skills 119 45.25 Is a good way to assess learning 101 38.40 Teaches students writing in the discipline 65 24.71 Improves students' research skills 61 23.19 Improves students'grammar, etc. 31 11.79 Other reasons 25 2.63 Critical thinking and understanding of subject matter rank significantly above concerns such as improving writing skills.
4. What kinds of writing do your students do?
Kind of writing Response frequency Percent Academic paper using research 183 69.58 Reviews of the professional literature 122 46.39 Academic essays 121 46.01 Short, informal in-class writings 88 33.46 Documents like those written on the job 82 31.18 Journals 72 27.38 Personal essays 70 26.62 E-mails, web board postings, etc. 70 26.62 Lab reports 64 24.33 Other writing assignments 49 18.63 Web pages 7 2.66 Apparently, assignments requiring research and use of sources (reviews of professional literature) and academic essays are considerably more common than documents like those written on the job. This reflects the distinction drawn by Walvoord between "text processing" assignments (academic essays, etc.) and assignments that treat students as "professionals in training." Both kinds of assignments have their uses and advantages, but at BSU the "text processing" kind of assignment appears to be preferred. (See Word Works #55-56.)
A rather substantial amount of short, informal in-class writing is assigned. This we take as a good sign. Informal writing assignments, which usually are ungraded and allow students the latitude to experiment and fail without penalty, are an important complement to formal assignments and are a good means of promoting writing for learning. If e-mails can be included in the category of informal writing, which most of them probably can be, then the amount of informal writing being used at BSU is even greater.
5. In what form do you give out the formal writing assignments?
Form Response frequency Percent Written instructions on paper 228 86.69 Oral instructions 151 57.41 Assignments in common course syllabus 126 47.91 Written instructions on web site 71 27.00 Assignments in textbook 41 15.59 Other forms 5 1.90 The greatest proportion of assignments by far are given out in some written form. Instructions given orally also account for a large percentage, but only four respondents reported that they exclusively gave out assignments orally. Almost all who used oral instructions also used other forms.
There is some risk in giving out assignments orally, as Writing Center consultants often attest. When they ask a writer, "What is the assignment?" and the writer doesn't have the assignment in writing, the answer they get is often vague or uncertain. There have even been instances when two or more writers from the same class come in, and each has a different interpretation of what the assignment is.
However, sometimes there may be good reason for giving out an assignment orally, especially when the instructor and the class have a clear mutual understanding of what the end product will be like.
6. How many pages of writing do your students typically produce in a semester?
Course level Response frequency Mean number of pages 100 112 18.29 200 111 20.69 300 154 24.13 400 152 28.26 500 122 37.08 The results from question 6 are probably not very reliable. For one thing, it is difficult for instructors to estimate how many pages they assign. Many assignments, for good reason, don't have any page limit or minimum. For another thing, the scanner that reads the numbers can mistake numbers for letters. But at least we can see an interesting trend. Apparently the amount of writing students are assigned climbs steadily through all class levels and takes a big jump at the graduate level.
We were surprised by this result, because we had previously assumed (as had many faculty we've talked to) that the amount of assigned writing drops during the sophomore year and then climbs back up in the junior and senior years. We have often used this assumption to explain why so many faculty complain about the difficulty students have writing well when they get into their senior classes. But now we may need to look at other explanations. Possibly the writing assigned at the 300 and 400 levels is more difficult, and that is what leads to a decline in writing skills.
Another explanation for the writing difficulties of upper division students might be the often temporary regression in performance experienced by some writers as they attempt more difficult or more specialized discourses in the disciplines.
7. If your students write from sources, what kinds do you want them to use?
Kind of source Response frequency Percent Professional journals 230 87.45 Books 211 80.23 Web sites 155 58.94 Interviews 111 42.21 Government documents 110 41.83 Original surveys or studies 97 36.88 Popular magazines 54 20.53 Other 36 13.69 The abundance of information and good sources on web sites keeps growing fast, so it isn't surprising that a large proportion of faculty apparently require students to do web searches and use web sources. Still, an even larger proportion of faculty require use of more traditional forms, professional journals and books. The division between web sources and professional journals is blurring, though, because many professional journals also are available online.
8 and 9. What do you look for when grading student work, and how successful are your students with these aspects of writing?
These were twin questions, aimed at finding out about teacher's expectations and student performance. So the best way to report the results is to compare them. We have listed the items below in the relative order in which they were ranked in importance.
Ranking Faculty look for... Students succeed at... 1 Quality of ideas Following instructions 2 Logical development organization 3 Clarity of expression Quality of ideas 4 Organization Logical development 5 Use of appropriate evidence Use of sources 6 Following instructions Use of appropriate evidence 7 Correctness and format Quality of research 8 Use of sources Clarity of expression 9 Quality of research Correctness and format 10 Other Other In all aspects, the rating for student success was lower than faculty expectations. Another way to look at the results is to examine the gaps by subtracting the mean (midpoint score) of question 9 from that of question 8, to find out how large the discrepancy is between faculty expectations and student performance. We get the following figures.
Aspect of writing Amount of difference Clarity of expression 2.39 Quality of ideas and reasoning 2.30 Logical development 2.19 Use of appropriate evidence 2.04 Organization 1.72 Correctness and format 1.55 Quality of research 1.29 Use of sources 1.21 Following instructions 0.94 The biggest difference was in the "other" category, 33.62. But since there were only 32 "other" responses to question 8 and 17 to question 9, we didn't include it in the table.
Some conclusions
Our biggest surprise in the survey was the sheer numbers of faculty who assign writing, in the vast majority of departments on campus. We have begun to get answers to the questions we have been asking ourselves for some time, for instance, when we prepare students for academic writing in English 101 and 102, what are we preparing them for? When students bring drafts to the writing center for papers in just about all possible subjects, what are we seeing? Are we seeing a few isolated cases of teachers assigning papers, or are we seeing the tip of the iceberg?In the Writing Center, we are seeing the tip of the iceberg. The Writing Center and Writing Across the Curriculum clearly could be serving a much larger constituency of faculty and students. Of the concerns listed in questions 8 and 9, the Center can certainly be helping more students with such concerns as clarity of expression, reasoning, organization, and correctness, no matter what the subject.
The survey results also reaffirm the importance of instruction in research-based writing, a current emphasis in the composition program, particularly in English 102. It is also interesting to note that the surveyed faculty were most disappointed by "clarity of expression" in student writing. In one sense, this is no surprise faculty have always complained about this since the first composition programs were established over a hundred years ago. But the survey reinforces what the Writing Program's assessment program recently dramatized: the need for more effective pedagogies for teaching style and correctness.
Bruce Ballenger, Director of Writing
Rick Leahy, Writing Center/WAC Director
Work Cited Walvoord, Barbara E. Thinking and Writing in College: A Naturalistic Study of Students in Four Disciplines. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1990.