SACS Assessment Overview

SACs Assessment of ENG 100, ENG 200, and ENG 300

The department is currently conducting an assessment of ENG 100, ENG 200, and ENG 300. These assessments do not affect student grades. Nevertheless, you should be aware of these procedures so that they may design your syllabi accordingly. The materials for all of these assessments will be required from students before the week of final exams. Four students from each section of ENG 100, ENG 200, and ENG 300 classes will be randomly selected by Institutional Research for the assessment, and you will be notified which students have been selected. You should include a passage on your syllabi about these assessments and explain them to students.

Students selected for the ENG 100 assessment will turn in a portfolio. Portfolios should consist of an essay students have written and revised out of class and a 45-minute impromptu piece they have revised only within that single time period.

Students selected for the ENG 200 assessment will turn in an analytic paper (500-750 words), written as a part of their regular course assignments, which critically examines a literary work or concept. Instructors should keep in mind that this assessment can cover aspects of both the content and the written presentation.

Students selected for the ENG 300 assessment will turn in a research paper. Each student research paper in ENG 300 should be clearly appropriate in content, as well as in style and citation format, for that student's area of academic study. The research paper should demonstrate that the student is aware of major issues in his or her field and has selected a topic that addresses a current line of research and thought or a contemporary issue in that field in a meaningful way. The citation format for each student's research paper should be one that is conventionally used within that discipline.

Research papers should make an argument about their topic and not be strictly informational.

Each student's research paper in ENG 300 should demonstrate the student's ability to use sources in support of his or her argument. Ideally, papers should also demonstrate the student's ability to synthesize those sources in the context of an appropriate argument and to address those sources in a meaningful way: to explain them, to suggest why they have been chosen, and even to argue against them. Students should avoid either simply placing sources into a paper without addressing those sources or stringing together sources to construct the major points of the argument.