Dear colleagues,
The editorial team at The Journal of Writing Assessment (JWA) is excited to announce the publication of Volume 18, Issue 1 of JWA. The issue features two regular issue articles focused especially on grading and alternative writing assessment, and a special section on Student Self Placement.
This issue is the end of Carl Whithaus’s decade-long tenure as JWA Editor. Beginning with the next issue, Mathew Gomes, Lizbett Tinoco, and Stacy Wittstock will be stepping up to be editors for JWA.
Thank you to the authors for all of their incredible work, and to the team of reviewers that contributed to this issue.
Volume 18, Issue 1 of JWA includes:
- Editor’s Introduction: Placement and Its Discontents or The Long Winding Road toward Change, by Carl Whithaus
In his final Editor’s Introduction for The Journal of Writing Assessment, Carl Whithaus reflects on 10 years editing JWA, noting that conversations over the last 10 years have focused on the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), labor based grading contracts, student self-placement, and a renewed attention to fairness along with reliability and validity.
- Using Completion Rubrics to Grade Engagement in Online Spaces by Sallie Koenig, Catrina Mitchum, and Shelley Rodrigo
This study examines how completion rubrics impact student learning and agency in online asynchronous courses. The study was conducted during the Fall 2021 term in three 7.5-week courses: two sections of ENGL101 and one section of ENGL300. The analysis focuses on student survey responses. We found that student responses focused on defining labor, coming to terms with invisible labor, how they experienced this new assessment system, their perceptions about the connection between assessment and learning, and finally four distinct time-related themes. First, time emerged as a theme while students defined labor. Second, it appeared repeatedly as students discussed invisible labor and grading not accounting for time a task might take. Third, students distinguished between how previous experience and skills impact an individual’s time on task. Finally, students associated saving time with gaining agency and being able to prioritize other areas outside of the class. Completion rubrics empowered students to make well-informed choices about where they spend their time, allowing them to prioritize their learning needs. However, designing equitable assessment systems requires considering classroom context as each context presents unique challenges and opportunities. This study offers valuable insights for designing more inclusive online course curricula and assessments that acknowledge and account for students’ time.
- The Trouble With “Ungrading”: Toward Disciplinary Specificity in Alternative Writing Assessment by Maggie Fernandes, Emily Brier, and Megan McIntyre
Responding to the emergent discourse around “ungrading,” this essay articulates the need for disciplinary conversations about alternative writing assessments, conversations that center work on antiracism, Black Linguistic Justice, and anti-ableist composition pedagogies and policies. From that foundation, we argue, we have the chance to build concrete, specific, and equitable alternative assessment practices that also include the practices and voices of the faculty and graduate students most likely to be teaching first-year composition courses.
Special Section – Student Self Placement (SSP)
- Special Section Introduction: Collaboratively Building Our SSP Scholarship (Because Placement is Still Everyone’s Business), by Kate Pantelides and Erin Whittig
Kate Pantelides and Erin Whittig offer three artifacts intended as invitations for others to take up, a potential foundation for a third space. First, a listicle in the tradition of Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle (2015), which highlights what we think we know about placement, based on last year’s special issue and this year’s special section. Next, they include an SSP Writing Context Map and an SSP Data Types Matrix based on the ten studies that make up these SSP articles. They offer these matrices as both an invitation and a suggestion to further contextualize our understandings about what we know in placement, highlighting spaces for voices that still need to be heard from about SSP cross-institutionally.
- Wrap-around support via a directed self placement model: A treatment for SLAC writing programs by Genie Giaimo and Kristina Reardon
In this paper, two WPAs at small and highly selective liberal arts colleges (SLACs) discuss the process of developing and implementing a “wrap-around” directed self placement (DSP) model. Beginning with a braided narrative, the authors discuss the impetus for the DSP, its impact on course placement, as well as using DSP data to create robust support plans for individual students. Of course, given the elite nature of the authors’ institutions, we also discuss how to apply a DSP model in a competitive and highly selective context where there are few, if any, developmental courses. Here, we offer possibilities for DSPs at SLACs that include retention and persistence tracking, as well as tracing self-efficacy by disciplinary specialization (i.e., STEM). We end by sharing our instruments and guidance on how SLAC WPAs can use DSP in novel and more comprehensive ways.
- Everything Old Is New Again: Reconsidering DSP Amid the Changing Academic Landscape at Grand Valley State University, by Amy Ferdinandt Stolley, Duvan Mulally, and Craig Hulst
As the origin of directed self-placement (DSP), Grand Valley State University is in the unique position of having created, adapted, and maintained a DSP program for almost thirty years. This article explores the history of GVSU’s placement practices to articulate what we have learned about DSP amid our institution’s changing academic landscape. Using interviews and reflections from past and current administrators who lead our placement practices, we demonstrate that the philosophical foundation of DSP—student self-efficacy—remains the guiding light of our placement practices. However, we argue that multiple changes experienced at many institutions, including new admissions standards, changing student demographics, and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, require WPAs to consider new questions about DSP to ensure that our placement practices promote equity and access to all students.
- Afterword: Finding the Right Note in Writing Placement, by Jessica Nastal and Kris Messer
In this afterword, the authors offer a context for the work done in Pantelides and Whittig’s special issue and special section and identify actionable threads that readers might use to twine justice into their own work with self-placement. They additionally refer to heuristics colleagues have established to aid readers in their own efforts to validate writing placement practices in their local situations. Ultimately, they argue it is vital to look towards two-year college practices, as it is in these spaces where we bear witness to the multi-faceted complexities and the radical possibilities of SSP.
Matt Gomes, PhD
Assistant Professor of English
Santa Clara University
Associate Editor and Social Media Coordinator, The Journal of Writing Assessmentpronouns: he/him