Closing the Loop: A Strategy to Improve Students’ Writing Skills in an Accounting Class

By Donna Dolansky

I’ve been teaching ACC 401 every spring term since I started at Utica College three years ago.  In this course, we assess students’ communication skills (oral and written) with the expectation that they will be performing at the proficiency-level.   Our target is that 100% of students will achieve 80% or higher on a final paper scored using a rubric.

The first year I taught the course (Spring 2017), 87% of students achieved the target and 13% did not.  At the same time, I was serving on a search committee for a biology faculty member, and Larry Aaronson, another committee member, mentioned to me that he assigns a novel each year in his biology class and asks students to blog about the book.  He added that he wrote a paper about how this improved their ability to communicate in writing.

I thought this was a great idea, so in the Spring 2018 semester, I assigned a novel related to auditing and asked students to write responses to a series of questions I raised about the reading.  I also asked them to write any general observations they had about the book.  This provided me with an opportunity to review students’ writing and offer feedback on a low stakes assignment.

The results?  Students’ writing slightly improved, and, more importantly, students believed that they benefitted from the experience. When asked whether or not they found the assignment useful, the majority of students responded affirmatively, saying they found the reading beneficial and their writing skills improved.  Further, students credited the assignment with developing their critical thinking abilities. 

A number of students acknowledged the importance of reading and writing in “real life work,” and so they perceived this assignment as helping them develop essential skills for today’s professional workforce. 

In the words of one student, “When we were first told of the assignment I was worried I would dread having to read the book because I thought it was going to be boring. I enjoyed this book so much however, that I have recommended it to many of the people I work 

Assignment or Assessment: What's the Difference?

I am a big promoter of course-embedded assessments, what Linda Suskie describes as “course assessments that do double duty, providing information not only on what students have learned in the course but also on their progress in achieving program or institutional goals” (Suskie 27). 

Research papers, capstone projects, presentations, evaluations from clinical or internship supervisors—these are authentic assessments that allow us to gather evidence of student performance in our programs without necessarily adding to our workload.  Suskie credits course-embedded assessments with keeping assessment processes manageable, and, because they are developed locally, “they match up well with learning goals” (27). 

While course-embedded assessments are often course assignments, the assignment itself is not an assessment measure, and grades earned are not considered direct, valid evidence of student performance. 

That last sentence reads like assessment doublespeak, so think of the difference this way.  The assignment might be to compose a research paper and then present the work orally to the class.  How the paper and presentation are assessed is the assessment measure.  Typically, papers and presentations are scored by rubric, a scoring guide that provides clear and detailed descriptive criteria for what constitutes excellent work and what signifies an unacceptable performance. The rubric, therefore, is the assessment measure, assuming that what it is measuring aligns to a learning goal.   

Likewise, specific questions on an exam that measure a learning goal may serve as an assessment measure, while the complete examination, like the research paper, is the assignment.

When assignments are confused with assessment measures, the results do not produce specific enough information about student learning that has implications for continuous improvement.  A typical example of such assessment findings might read, “73% of student earned grades of 80 or higher on the presentation. Target was achieved.”  Such findings report how students performed on a given assignment in a given class on a given day, but they do not indicate anything about where student performance was especially strong, and where it was less successful.  Were the presentations well organized?  Were the delivery techniques effective?  Did the students use technology well to convey their messages? 

Assessment goes beyond grading and analyzes patterns of student performance.  Good assessment methods help identify these patterns. 

To learn about the advantages and disadvantages of specific assessment methods, visit  https://www.utica.edu/academic/Assessment/new/resources.cfm  or contact the Office of Academic Assessment in 127 White Hall.

Works Cited

Suskie, Linda. Assessing Student Learning: A Common Sense Guide. San Franscisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009.

Using Course-Embedded Assessments for Program-Level Purposes

In my previous blog, I wrote, “It might be tempting to think that a handful of course-level assessments will add up to program assessment, but they do not.” 

If this is true, how might course-embedded assessments—i.e. exam questions, papers, projects, labs, performances—be used for program-level (or even institution-level) assessment?

The History Department offers an excellent example of just how course-embedded assessment translates to the program level. In this major, a capstone project was scored using a rubric where each item aligned to a program-learning goal.  The results were analyzed with respect to which program learning goals students were successfully achieving at the proficiency level.  Since the project was completed over the course of a full year, beginning in spring semester of the junior year and ending in the spring semester of the senior year, findings might also be analyzed to determine growth, or value-added, in the major.  Finally, the recommendations and action plans made were program-level ones, namely a curriculum revision that exposes students to historical methodology earlier in the program and requires more writing-intensive courses.   

Similarly, the English faculty developed a departmental rubric to score student papers in courses required for the major or for Core.  Rubric items align with the program-level learning goals.  The rubric was applied by individual instructors, and results were analyzed to see if student performance improved from 100-level courses to 300/400-level ones.  Majors were compared to non-majors, giving the faculty another way to view the data. Such analyses yielded program-level insights into student learning: the department identified where its majors were performing well and where the faculty may need to be more intentional about developing students’ competencies.   

Another example of how course-embedded assessments translate to the program-level may be found in Philosophy.  Philosophy faculty applied a departmental rubric to particular assignments in their classes that targeted relevant program learning goals and course objectives.  They measured student performance in courses that introduce the learning goal and compared these findings with results gathered from courses that reinforce the learning.  This assessment plan has allowed the faculty to demonstrate successful student learning in their program and has also indicated a need for improved adjunct faculty development.

Course-embedded assessments are a sustainable, organic approach to assessment and, because the work is generated in a course, students are probably motivated to do well.   That said, if they are going to be used for program assessment, the measures must align with program goals, multiple measures should be use to assess learning at various transition points in the curriculum, and the data should be analyzed with respect to the program’s goals.