November 2015 Volume 2015/Issue 1
Data sets the tone and focus for a major change in the MVC QEP Mission
The QEP Steering Committee proposes a revision of the QEP mission
now to “increase the persistence of degree-seeking First-Time-InCollege students.”
What prompts this dramatic change is, in part, the decline in the number of
students enrolled in Developmental Writing classes as well as the many
First-Time-In-College (FTIC) students who are exempted from the TSI.
Additionally, with the lowering of TSI writing standards, students who
before would have been placed within a tier of Developmental Writing
courses are now being mainstreamed into ENGL 1301 and other transfer
courses. Following these changes, the QEP leadership has been conducting a review of student enrollment data in an effort to reassess the overall
mission statement of the SACS-approved Quality Enhancement Plan: “The
Pen is Our Power.”
The 2012-approved plan had as its original mission “to increase ihe
MVC QEP Steering Committee members Jody Cunningham and
graduation rates of former Developmental Writing students.” That
Dean Heather Marsh review student enrollment data.
mission was a response to institutional data that revealed that less than five
percent of former Developmental Writing students were graduating each year. The implementation of Writing-Intensive Courses across disciplines,
facilitated by volunteer faculty members, aimed at providing struggling students with additional support in improving writing skills and, thereby,
hopefully encouraging them to persist toward completing their Associates Degrees.
New data, however, reveals that just slightly over 66% of First-Time-In-College (FTIC) students declare initially their intention to seek any kind of
college degree. Additional data shows that those students who do complete Associate Degrees at MVC take four or more years to do so. In fact,
most of the FTIC students who declare an interest in completing a degree move on from the college without a degree in hand.
One of the reasons students fail to complete either certificates or Associates degrees is their failure to persist from semester to semester. They
simply drop out, disappear, and move on. It seems clear that students who fail to persist—to re-enroll from semester to semester—are not likely to
complete any degree. For the purposes of the QEP, the leadership defines “persistence” as “re-enrollment from fall to fall.”
The QEP Steering Committee now proposes to shift its focus from “student graduation” to “student persistence.” Qualitative data collected from
students completing both Writing-Intensive Courses and Writing-Enhanced Courses hopefully will show that their experiences in these courses
have encouraged them to continue their studies and to re-enroll in subsequent semesters.
QEP Faculty Profiles—Dr. Ryan Pettengill, A QEP Pioneer
Dr. Ryan Pettengill, an original member of the MVC QEP Committee, teaches American History 1301 and 1302. With fellow colleagues Amanda
Humphries, Speech Instructor, and Dean Quinton Wright,
Dr. Pettengill helped frame the concept of “writing-intensive courses” that to this day represent the key
instructional element addressing Goals 1 and 2 of the Quality Enhancement Plan. Ryan was one of the
very first professors to implement a “WICS” course offered for the first time in 2012, the pilot year for the
project.
Dr. Pettengill, who holds B.A., M.A., and Ph.D degrees from Michigan State University, claims the
writing components are essential learning activities in his courses. “Most who students come into my
classes don’t like to write. However, the extra help they receive on their writing assignments makes
them much more confident about themselves, both as learners and as writers.”
“I have a friend, an anesthesiologist,” I always relate in my opening lecture, “a guy who told me that all
the way through college, he chose classes that didn’t require writing. I tell my students that if they will
find that, if they can write, they will be better students in their other courses—here and elsewhere. A
number of my students have actually received awards and scholarships to SMU and other area
colleges, in part, on the strength of their writing ability.”
Dr. Pettengill continues to serve on the QEP Assessment Committee and recommends the expansion of
Writing-Intensive Courses to his colleagues across the academic disciplines.
MVC History Instructor
Dr. Ryan Pettengill
Professor Becky Heiskel teaches “Writing-Enhanced” Statistics classes in the MVC Math Department. In each of her courses she requires several
types of writing.
Professor Becky Heiskell promotes writing by
MVC Math Students
Math instructor Becky Heiskell is committed to student learning and believes that writing should be
an essential factor in that learning—even in math courses!
A recent past-president of the MVC Faculty Association, Professor Heiskell holds a B.A. degree in
math from Dallas Baptist University, an M.A. in math from the University of Texas at Arlington, and is
ABD in math at the University of Texas at Austin.
Professor Heiskell is one of those highly enthusiastic “writing” instructors teaching outside the disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences in which writing is a major learning activity. She celebrates the value of writing across disciplines. Writing has always been a significant requirement in
her statistics courses.
“Writing,” says Professor Heiskell, “is ideal for a statistics course. Students read the context statements of a problem, set up an approach to that problem, formulate a hypothesis, analyze the data,
Math Professor Becky Heiskel
and come to a conclusion. Each of these stages lends itself to writing. Students compose summaries,
discuss their findings, and justify their conclusions.”
Professor Heiskell has taught at Mountain View College for many years. Before coming to the
DCCCD, she taught math at Temple College where for ten years, she explains, she had her students write group compositions. She complains,
however, that when she tried to institute similar writing in her MVC classes, her enrollments collapsed. “Students don’t like to write.”
The advent of the QEP has given new impetus for introducing writing. Unlike the Writing-Intensive Courses that require quite a bit of writing and
longer papers, Professor Heiskell opts for the “Writing-Enhanced Course” option that requires that one paper be subject to instructor review and
revisions.
Professor Heiskell notes that she and Dr. Wright tried to introduce “Statway” courses that included “pathways” to better enhance student learning.
Completion of the two-semester “Statway” classes helped students to avoid an extra Developmental Math course they would have had to complete
otherwise, but she notes the difficulties she had trying “to make” the courses.
The QEP Committee reorganizes and realigns, embraces new charges
At the beginning of the 2014 Fall semester, the QEP Steering Committee met with Dr. Quentin Wright, Interim-Vice
President of Instruction, to reassess the tasks of the various committees and the charges to each, now that the QEP
enters its second year of implementation.
The core mission of the QEP remains to increase the number of developmental writing student graduates. Institutional
data suggests that fewer than five percent of students placed into developmental writing courses ever graduate with an
Associates Degree. Now that we have data on students assigned to developmental writing sections who have entered
into transfer courses, we face that task of tracking those students. There are several reason for reorganizing the QEP
Committee structure. We must respond to the new data we are collecting, to reassess how we track those students, and
to adjust our advising to assure that these students continue into WICS or QEP-enhanced courses.
The QEP Mission: To increase
the number of graduating former
developmental writing students.
Goal 1: To improve student
writing.
Goal 2: To increase the amount
of student writing.
Goal 3: To nurture a culture of
writing across the MVC campus.
The QEP Steering Committee
Dr. Quentin Wright, Interim Vice President of Instruction, Co-Chair
Dr. Geoff Grimes, Professor of English, Co-Chair
Luke Story, Director, The QEP and the Mountain View College Academic
Center for Writing
Fred Taylor, Director of MVC Facilities, Honorary Member
Emmanuel “Manny” Faz, Office of Student Life
Jody Cunningham, Office of Institutional Research
Moises Almendariz, Title V Grant Manager
Norma Guzman-Duran, Director, Office of Professional Development
Darius Frasure, Professor of English
The Advisory Committee
College Engagement
Charges:
1) Review application proposals of instructors
planning to teach QEP/WICS courses.
2) Provide recommendations to QEP faculty,
based upon applications, of how the courses.
can be better aligned to achieve the QEP goals.
3) Communicate revisions to WICS/QEP Enhanced criteria to QEP faculty.
4) Issue calls for new QEP courses.
Charges:
1) Expand membership and college representation within the QEP committee.
2) Recruit and engage non-writing disciplines.
3) Provide information sessions or other communication opportunities about the QEP.
4) Sustain awareness of QEP-related activities.
Dr. Geoff Grimes, Chair
Prof. Dara Adeyemi
Dr. Ken Alfers
Prof. Taunya Dixon-Collins
Prof. Debbie Nichols
The Assessment Committee
Charges:
1) Assessment of Goals 1, 2 & 3
2) Collection and assessment of writing samples from WICS and QEP Enhanced courses to
assess Goal 1
3) Development and implementation of
measures to assess Goals 2 & 3
Dr. Geoff Grimes, Co-Chair
Jody Cunningham, Co-Chair
Prof. Tony Kroll
Prof. Lisa Jackson
Dr. Sarah Hutchings
Prof. Jonathan York
Dr. Ryan Pettengill
Moises Almendariz, Chair
Tony Kroll
Patricia Lyons
Carlos Cruz
Markay Rister
Richard Parra
Tamar Slider
Kumars Ranjbaran
Mariaelena Godinez
Pete Montanez
Culture of Writing
Charge:
Develop, promote, and facilitate activities and
events focused on the culture of writing.
Darius Frasure, Chair
Lisa Jackson
Joseph Brockway
Jesse Gonzalez
Tremaya Reynolds
Cathy Edwards
James Harris
James Behan
Gilda Nunez
Emmanual Faz
Professional Development
Charges:
1) Promote the ongoing development of faculty.
2) Identify and facilitate professional opportunities for MVC staff.
3) Track the amount of attendance of QEP
events.
4) Create QEO certification and non-certification
tracks.
5) Develop a manual of consequential writing
activities
Norma Guzman-Duran, Chair
Joyce Tarpley
Ulises Rodriguez
Luke Story
Farzin Farzad
Initial Assessment Report for Fall 2013 WICS and QEP Courses
Prepared by Geoffrey Grimes, Chair, QEP Writing Assessment Committee
Revised and Submitted: April 17, 2014
Assessment Committee Members (February, 2014)
Dr. Geoffrey Grimes, English, Co-Chair
Dr. Sarah Hutchings, Biology
Prof. Lisa Jackson, English
Dr. Ryan PettengIll, History
Prof. Jonathan York, Government
Charge
The function of the QEP Assessment Committee is to meet periodically to
evaluate the QEP Goal #1: To increase student mastery of writing skills.
The committee met in February, 2014 to receive the random sampling of
student essays submitted by Fall, 2013 faculty of both Writing Intensive courses
(WICS) and QEP-Enhanced courses (QEP-Enhanced). The committee
received flash drives containing the samplings from both sets of courses. The sampling included 45 papers selected
from WICS courses and 28 papers from QEP courses.
Using the QEP Writing Rubric, members of the committee evaluated each paper, determining whether or not each
“meets expectations” or “fails to meet expectations.”
Methodology
To evaluate QEP Goal #1, the committee reviews each year at least one randomly selected sampling of papers submitted by the WICS and QEP-Enhanced Course faculty. These may be papers of the instructors choosing.
While each member was free to assess each element of the rubric, each provided a summative conclusion for each
paper in the two sets of samples.
Evaluation Criteria
Each of the five members of the Assessment Committee read and evaluated each paper in the sampling, awarding an
overall assessment of either “meets expectations” or “fails to meet expectations.” If a paper received three “meets”
evaluations, the paper passed; conversely, if the paper received three “fails to meet” evaluations, the paper failed.
Findings
Of 45 papers submitted in the WICS sampling, 29 papers, or 58% passed, while 16 papers, or 42% of the papers failed.
Of 28 papers submitted in the QEP-Enhanced sampling, 21 papers, or 68% passed, while 7 papers, or 32% failed.
Observations and Points for Exploration
1) The Assessment Committee membership represent a spectrum of courses across the disciplines of the humanities,
social sciences, and live sciences. Presently, however, the membership does not have representation from business
and marketing, the fine arts, education, physical education, and mathematics disciplines. Each of these areas are
targets for expanding both the WICS and QEP-Enhanced course offerings in the future.
2) The sampling of papers for both the WICS and QEP-Enhanced courses lack consistency in genre, levels of development, and formalities of research principles, and the use of style sheets, making it difficult to draw a number of important
conclusions about the levels of effectiveness beyond an evaluation of grammar, mechanics, and organizations. The
committee should review and perhaps clarify or revise the criteria faculty will follow in selecting representative assignments for submitting for each annual evaluation.
3) Copies of the instructions submitted to students for the sample papers that faculty members submit will help the
Assessment Committee to better understand the weight to assign to each element of the QEP Writing Rubric when
evaluating the papers.
(continued on the next page)
Initial Assessment Report for Fall 2013 WICS and QEP Courses (continued)
4) Occasionally, there is wide disparity in the assessment of papers in the two sets of samplings. More time devoted to
“leveling” of sample papers—discussions of several samples regarding the weights to be assigned to the various elements of the QEP Writing Rubric might bring the assessments closer.
5) Simply tallying the pass/fail totals to determine the status of each paper without discussion of particularly what appear
to be outlier assessments, deviating widely from the majority of the scores, seems problematic. The purpose of such
discussions should not be to force compliance or a relaxation of a grader’s standards, but rather, to gain a clearer understanding of points of disagreement that may point to other issues in the process or in the use of the QEP Writing Rubric
itself.
6) Use of the QEP Writing Rubric over several semesters reveals that not all elements of effective writing are reflected in
the current version (paragraph development, for one example). The rubric needs to be reviewed, modified, and then resubmitted to the full QEP Committee for approval.
7) The current cycle for evaluating samples might be expanded to include samplings from both fall and spring WICS and
QEP-Enhanced courses.
QEP Leadership Profile: Moises Almendariz
Moises Almendariz serves as the MVC Title Five Grant Manager, overseeing a fiveyear, $5 million dollar United States Department of Education grant that funds STEM
(Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) activities. In that capacity, Moises
also serves as the Chair of the newly formed QEP Engagement Committee.
“The primary purpose of the QEP,” explains Moises, “is really to expand awareness
of the QEP across the campus. The problem is that after the initial flush of enthusiasm and the celebration of its SACS endorsement in 2012, it’s too easy for the aura
to dim as people settle back into their disciplines and work routines. But the QEP is
too important, and the job of the QEP Engagement Committee is to keep the campus
focused on our goals to improve writing, increase writing, and to continue to nurture a
culture of writing throughout the college community.”
As the “Title V” grants manager, Almendariz sees a clear and clean relationship to
the objectives of the college’s QEP with its focus on writing and the purposes of the
U. S. Department of Education STEM thrust.
“The Pen is Our Power,” says Moises, “is a mantra that cuts across all disciplines,
and certainly in the sciences, engineering, math, and technology fields. To be effecttive, students have to be able to communicate; they have to be able to write coherMoises Almendariz
ently and with clarity; they have to be able to analyze data, interpret findings, and
make judgments. These requisites aren’t just the domains of English classes. If science, engineering, math, and technology students can’t write within their disciplines, they won’t be able to make effective contributions in their fields. They
won’t be able to explain what they have learned. And they won’t be able to hold significant jobs or to advance out in the
working and professional worlds.”
Moises joined the Mountain View College administrative team in 2003, serving under Presidents Monique Amerman
and Felix A. Zamora. Since the inception of the first QEP Steering Committee in 2008, he has worked closely across
both sides of the college, bridging the academic house with Student Services and Student Life. He also conducts
outreach initiatives with area colleges and universities, most recently facilitating a QEP faculty and staff exchange with
both instructors, department heads, and educational tutors at the University of North Texas at Dallas and Mountain View
College.
“The QEP Engagement Committee has a hefty charge,” notes Moises. “What we have to do is not something we can
just put out there and walk away from. Our work is to keep the college focused on the needs of our students as writers,
promoting the QEP and its initiatives that will pay off with a higher graduation rate as a result of their success in their
classes.”
Luke Story assumes post as the Director of the MVC Writing Center
Following the untimely death of former Writing Center Director Kevin Williams,
Luke Story has assumed the post. Luke left a career in business to return to
graduate school to pursue studies in writing and was looking for an opportunity
to enter college teaching.
Kevin had specifically singled out Luke after meeting him at an MVC jobs fair,
calling him personally over a weekend to offer him a position on the Writing
Center staff.
Luke jumped at the opportunity to work with Kevin and delivered an impassioned
tribute to Kevin at the college’s memorial service.
“Kevin Williams simply changed my life,” says Luke, “when he gave me the
opportunity to join the Writing Center staff of composition specialists. I could not
be more proud or more humbled at the same time to have been selected to
follow Kevin and the incredible job he did in expanding the services of the center
to thousands of previously underserved MVC students.”
In only the first year, under Luke’s leadership, Writing Center staff have made
significant contributions to the QEP. They have created a media library of short
videos on various aspects of composition and critical thinking. They have
expanded the offerings of both student and staff writing workshops and have
initiated an MVC Student Writers Club. An important project of the club is the
development of the “Lion’s Roar,” a digital writing blog and literary magazine.
As the Director of the QEP, Luke assumes responsibilities for coordinating staff
Luke Story, former Writing Center
adjunct, assumes the Directorship
after the passing of Kevin Williams.
and faculty training and working with the several QEP committee chairs in achieving their objectives. Most importantly,
however, is the role he plans in coordinating writing services to the thousands of students who come to the writing center
for assistance.
The QEP Committee announces new Workshops for 2014-2015
The QEP Committee has announced fifteen QEP-related staff and faculty development workshops for fall and spring,
2014-2015. The workshops are scheduled each Wednesday afternoon and feature both Writing Center staff and college faculty as the workshop facilitators.
“This is one of the most ambitious efforts to date,” says Luke Story. “These workshops are aimed at faculty, administrators, as well as professional support staff. They will go a long way to achieving our objectives for QEP Goals 2 and 3:
‘Increasing the Amount of Writing’ and ‘Nurturing a Culture of Writing.’”
Following are 2014-2015 Workshops (schedules to be announced):
The QEP Rubric (Revised)
2) The Writing Process
3) Writing Activities Across the Disciplines
4) QEP/WICS Courses
5) Critical Thinking in the Disciplines
6) The QEP
7) Tips for Active Reading: A Strategy for Learning
8) MLA/APA Research Paper Formatting
9) Information Resources: A Guide for Students
10) Consequential Writing: Strategies for Student Success
11) Writing Curriculum: Ways to Incorporate Writing
12) Honing Personal and Professional Writing Skills
13) Portfolios: What they are and how to use them
14) Writing for Publication in the Digital & Printed World
15) Assessing Student Writing: High Stakes & Low Stakes Grading
QEP Assessment Committee moves to revamp the QEP Writing Rubric
The very heart of the MVC Quality Enhancement Plan
has been the QEP Writing Rubric, used by instructors to
provide feedback to students in individual courses but
also used for the first two years of the implementation of
the “Pen Is Our Power!” initiative for QEP program assessment as well. The Writing Rubric was also approved
as the official rubric for assessing student writing across
the disciplines as a college-wide assessment instrument.
The Writing Rubric reflects the five SLO’s for Goal 1: “To
improve student writing.” The bullet points for each area
reflect specific writing elements that may be assessed,
together addressing just about every critical feature of
college-level expository writing
The beauty of the rubric has always been the flexibility it
has provided faculty who may use it to assess the SLO’s
in all five areas or, as they may wish, to employ it in
assessing only one or two of the areas for any given
assignment. Additionally, because the rubric specifies
no values for each of the five areas and their elements,
instructors are free to weight each element as they wish
and to use them for ungraded feedback or even highstakes grading and assessment.
From the beginning, however, it has been clear that the
rubric needs rethinking and some revisions. Its specificity, in fact, has been its difficulty as an instrument for
assessing random samples of student written artifacts
collected by the QEP Committee for evaluating the
effectiveness of the WICS and QEP Enhanced courses.
Taking the lead from the DCCCD’s newly adopted AACU Values Rubrics, particularly the “Written Communications Value
Rubric,” a more generally crafted assessment of the fundamental principles of writing would be more useful for QEP
program-level assessment.
To that end, the QEP Assessment Committee recommends that the present QEP Writing Rubric (see above) be retained
for all the positive reasons identified all ready identified for instructors teaching specific sections of writing. At the same
time, the Assessment Committee will be composing something of a cross between the highly nuanced QEP Writing
Rubric (above) currently adopted by the college, and a more generally worded rubric that will better serve the purposes of
the Assessment Committee in evaluating the QEP student success each spring. (See the discussion in this newsletter.)
The QEP Program is now accepting faculty applications for fall, 2015 courses
The QEP Advisory Committee is soliciting applications now for teaching QEP courses (Writing Intensive Courses and
QEP-Enhanced Courses). Faculty members teaching courses that do not normally involve extensive writing activities as
learning work are especially encouraged to apply as a means for expanding our writing improvement in all disciplines.
To be eligible to teach a QEP course, faculty members must be certified. Certification requires faculty applicants to
complete a minimum of four hours of training, including introductions to the college-wide writing rubric and its applications and the writing process and its related assessment strategies. Faculty members are compensated financially for
developing the learning work for the courses. To complete an application, go to the following URL and complete the
online form: http://www.mountainviewcollege.edu/QEP/Pages/proposal-form.aspx
Luke Story, Director of the QEP and the MVC Academic Center for Writing, will contact interested faculty members and
set up a training schedule. The QEP Advisory Committee must receive the applications for new WICS and QEP
Enhanced courses by March 13 in order to provide feedback, notification of approval, and placement in the fall
schedule.
Markay Rister, Richard Parra develop a diagnostic instrument to assist
non-writing instructors in supporting underperforming students
No longer will non-writing professors have to be squeamish about evaluating student compositions submitted in their courses! To the rescue comes a team of QEP faculty members!
English instructor Markay Rister has teamed with psychology and computer science instructor Richard Parra in developing a grammar diagnostic instrument that will assist all instructors
affirming basic writing standards for compositions written in their classes.
“The problem,” says Professor Rister, “is that faculty members who would include more
writing in their classes don’t feel qualified to “teach” writing remediation to students who enter
their classes underprepared for college level courses. And be sure, we are getting more and
more underprepared students in our college-transfer courses who are woefully lacking in the
basics of standard written American English.”
Markay explains that the culprit behind the great influx of underprepared students in our
courses is a relaxation of standards in the TSI placement test the Texas Higher Education
Professor Markay Rister Coordinating Board (THECB) has mandated as the instrument for determining entry level of
new college students into Texas colleges and universities. More specifically, under the old Accuplacer Test, students
had to score a “6” on the essay component and a passing score on a sentence grammar component of the test. With the
new TSI instrument, in order to enter college-transfer courses, students now must score no higher than a “5” on the
essay with a complementary lowering of the standard for passing on the sentence grammar exercise. Both scores are
lowered without increasing the rigor of the essay topics and protocols.
The result of this diminution of standards is great influx of underprepared students whose papers exhibit a plethora of
sentence grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors with recurring comma splices, run-on sentences, and fragments,
errors that in generations ago would not have permitted graduation from a reputable high school.
Richard Parra has helped Markay digitize what was at first a printed grammar test graded with a Scantron instrument.
The strength of the new digitized version is that by January, the self-assessing digitized version will be accessible in the
ecCampus/Blackboard test pool, available to any instructor. Markay requires students to take the randomized test at the
beginning of the semester and then again as a post test at the end of the semester. Students must score “80” or higher
at the end of the semester, or Professor Rister will award a grade no higher than a “C” as a final grade.
Where do students who fail the course go for help? Markay identifies three sources: 1) the MVC Academic Center for
Writing, 2) her own “grammar clinics” offered from 2-3 p.m. each Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday (or by appointment), or the downloadable <www.grammar.monster.com> which now provides free online tutorial exercises.
New guidelines established as a basis for evaluating student writing in the disciplines
The QEP Assessment Committee has developed a set of “minimal” guidelines as a basis for assigning writing in QEP
courses. This set of guidelines will translated into a QEP Program-Level Assessment Rubric that will complement the
existing Writing Rubric that is still quite useful in tutoring or in instructor/student reviews of assignments.
Approaching the 2013-2014 pilot year of the QEP, the focus was on generating a writing rubric that would be useful in
assessment of writing across the disciplines. The rubric adopted by the QEP Committee and the Gen/Ed Committee as
a college-wide assessment tool identifies five areas for evaluating a student paper:1) student engagement of the writing
process, 2) grammar and mechanics, 3) organization and development, 4) use of information, and 5) critical reasoning.
What these standards for evaluation do not do, however, is to identify what a successful academic paper “looks like”—
what constitutes a “C” paper, a “B” paper, and an “A” paper.
These guidelines define the standards between a paper that “meets expectations” and one that “fails to meet expectations,” the fundamental standards used in the MVC Writing Rubric. “The beauty of these standards,” says Grimes, “is
that they are applicable across all disciplines or content areas and useful for instruction in both the Writing Intensive
Courses and the QEP-Enhanced Courses.” The QEP Assessment Committee will review act to accept or revise the
suggested guidelines.