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From college readiness to graduate employability and active citizenry: an evaluation study of writing skills at CSS

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From college readiness to graduate employability and active citizenry: an evaluation study of writing skills at CSS

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Content Running head: FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 1

FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND ACTIVE
CITIZENRY: AN EVALUATION STUDY OF WRITING SKILLS AT CSS

by

Dawn Marie Janke

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION

May 2018

Copyright 2018 Dawn Marie Janke

FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 2

Dedication

To my ray of light and my moon goddess:
the best is yet to come.

FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 3

Acknowledgements
The completion of this study would not have been possible without the encouragement
and support of my family, friends, and a whole network of others.
I foremost thank my children, who were abandoned time and time again during evening
classes and weekend writing marathons and who are love and forgiveness made manifest. They
witnessed firsthand the effort and drive that went into this work. Their encouragement kept me
going, and the light of their souls inspires me daily. They teach me what joy looks like. My
hope is that I model for them unbounded passion and that we all benefit from this experience.
To my parents, who instilled in me humility and a Midwestern, working-class ethic of
which I will always be proud: thank you. I am sad that my dad is not here to see me achieve this
goal, but knowing he has been with me in spirit every step of my doctoral program gave me
comfort when I was down and courage to keep moving forward. Because of him, I will always
remember that the only way around anything is through it. I especially appreciate my mom, my
cheerleader during all my wild pursuits, particularly this one. I am so grateful for every way she
has held me up over the years. I love you, mom.
My siblings and tribe of family and friends also have stood by and supported me while
I’ve followed this dream. Thank you, Eddie and Dana, for always championing me—it is fun to
be stuck in the middle with you. And thank you, as well, to my dearest aunt and uncle, Gloria
and Tony Stypinski, who are my biggest fans but who also always challenge me to do better. I
have so appreciated your mentorship over the years. There are too many others to list
individually, but you all know who you are, and I thank you for every text, every phone call,
every meal, and all the ways you helped sustain me throughout this effort. In your own ways,
you positively reinforced my crazy decision to go back to school as a single mom with a full-
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 4

time job—you always made me feel like I was doing the right thing, even when I questioned if I
was. I feel very blessed to be surrounded by such smart, caring people.
To the OCL May 2015 Cohort, my Trojan family: thank you! The collaborative
moments, constant check-ins, the feedback, and the laughs are in large part what made this
program meaningful. I am grateful to be included in this circle of scholars who have taught me
so much about the power of effective leadership and equity in education. As years go by and I
reflect on this accomplishment, I will remember fondly how we encouraged one another to fight
on.
For the educators who have guided me along the way, especially Drs. Jane Cogie, Sugie
Goen-Salter, William Tierney, and Jenifer Crawford, I could not be more thankful. Jane got me
started down this path in 2001 when she invited me to serve as the graduate administrative
assistant in the writing center at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. It was there that the
worlds of writing studies and academic support services opened up to me. For the care, concern,
and opportunities she afforded me, I will be forever grateful to Jane. I also will be forever
grateful that my career path led to membership in the California State University English Council
where I first encountered the heart and mind of Dr. Sugie Goen-Salter. Her constant questioning
of policy and ongoing advocacy of under-prepared college students is beyond commendable. I
admire her work and aspire to affect the field of writing studies in the ways I know she has. And
to Dr. William Tierney, thank you for your time and expertise. It has been a true honor to learn
from and engage in conversation with you.
I am particularly grateful for the connection I have with Dr. Jenifer Crawford. Her
commitment to equity in education deeply inspires me, and the knowledge and experience from
which she drew as she helped to guide my research has been invaluable. The passion she exudes
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 5

when she talks about education is infectious, and her smiles and nods always will remind me that
the work we do matters. Thank you, Dr. Crawford.
During my time in the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education’s
Organizational Change and Leadership doctoral program, the faculty and staff at CSS and across
the CSU system offered words of encouragement and supported me with data points and
conversations about my research. I cannot thank them enough for their openness to helping me
examine our practices, their interest in the results of my study, and their everyday kindnesses
throughout the process. I especially want to acknowledge Marikay Pannone and Beth Merritt
Miller, both without whom I would not have cleared my schedule and my head enough to
accomplish this work. In short, I am blessed with a great bunch of colleagues, and they all help
to make it worthwhile to show up every day.
Above all, I extend sincere gratitude to the students who directly participated in this
study. Their shared insights and experiences about writing and writing education brought
meaning to my work.
And to all my fellow lifelong learners: ánimo! We are the designers of our future.

FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 6

Table of Contents
List of Tables 9
List of Figures 10
Abstract 11
Chapter One: Overview of the Study 12
Background of the Problem 12
Importance of Addressing the Problem 14
Organizational Context and Mission 17
Organizational Goal 18
Description of Stakeholder Groups 19
Project Purpose and Research Questions 23
Conceptual and Methodological Framework 24
Definition of Terms 25
Organizational Structure of the Study 27
Chapter Two: Literature Review 28
College Readiness in English and Writing Skills for Graduate Employability 28
College Readiness in English 29
A Historic Overview of English Remediation 30
Basic writing instruction, 1900-1960 30
Basic writing and admissions policies 31
College Readiness and the Achievement Gap 33
State interventions for college preparedness 33
Underprepared student populations 36
Writing Skills for Graduate Employability and Active Citizenry 38
The Purpose of a College Education 38
A utilitarian perspective of higher education 38
A utopian perspective of higher education 40
Employability and Citizenry in the 21
st
Century 41
Technology 41
Globalization 43
A Gap Analysis of Writing and Writing Education 45
Knowledge, Motivation, and Organizational Influences on Writing Skills
Attainment 46
Writing Knowledge and Skills 47
Knowledge of multiple literacies 49
Knowledge of genre and discourse conventions 50
Audience awareness 51
Motivation to Attain Advanced Levels of Writing Proficiency 53
Utility value 54
Self-efficacy 57
Goal orientation 59
Organizational Influences on Student Writing and Writing Education 62
General theory 62
Stakeholder-specific influences 64
The Intersection of Writing Skills, Motivation to Learn, and Organizational
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 7

Context 70
Chapter Three: Methodology 74
Study Site and Participating Stakeholders 74
Data Instrumentation and Collection 76
Survey 77
Survey sampling criterion 1 78
Survey sampling criterion 2 79
Survey sampling criterion 3 79
Survey sampling criterion 4 80
Survey protocol 80
Interviews and Focus Groups 80
Interviews and focus groups sampling criterion 1 81
Interviews and focus groups sampling criterion 2 82
Interviews and focus groups sampling criterion 3 82
Interviews and focus groups protocol 82
Observations 83
Observations sampling criterion 1 84
Observations sampling criterion 2 84
Observations protocol 84
Document Analysis 85
Institutional Data Report 87
Data Analysis 87
Credibility and Trustworthiness 89
Validity and Reliability 91
Ethics 93
Limitations and Delimitations 96
Chapter Four: Results 98
Study Participants 98
Results and Findings 103
Writing and Writing Education 103
College Readiness in English and Degree Attainment 115
Knowledge Influences on Writing Skills Attainment 117
Multiple literacies 117
Genre and discourse conventions 120
Audience awareness 122
Motivation Influences on Writing Skills Attainment 128
Utility value 129
Self-efficacy 132
Goal orientation 136
Organizational Influences on Writing and Writing Education 137
The culture of writing 137
The transfer of learning 146
Conclusion 151
Chapter Five: Discussion and Recommendations 153
Discussion 153
Recommendations 154
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 8

Knowledge Recommendations 154
Multiple literacies recommendations 154
Genre and discourse conventions recommendations 156
Audience awareness recommendations 158
Motivation Recommendations 159
Utility value motivation recommendations 160
Self-efficacy motivation recommendations 161
Goal orientation motivation recommendations 162
Organizational Recommendations 164
Recommendations to improve the campus culture of writing 165
Recommendations to improve the transfer of learning 169
An Integrated Implementation and Evaluation Plan for Writing and Writing
Education 170
Implementation and Evaluation Framework 170
Organizational Purpose, Need, and Expectations 171
Results and Leading Indicators 171
Stakeholder Behavior 172
Critical behaviors 172
Required drivers 173
Organizational support 175
Learning 177
Learning goals 177
Newly designed writing-intensive courses 178
Components of learning for newly designed writing-intensive
courses 180
Stakeholder Reaction to Newly Designed Writing Curriculum 182
Evaluation Tools 183
Immediately following a course 183
Delayed for a period after course completion 184
Data Analysis and Reporting 184
Conclusion 186
References 191
Appendix A: Emailed Recruitment Letter with Informed Consent and Link to Survey 220
Appendix B: Survey 222
Appendix C: Emailed Recruitment Letter – Focus Group Participation 229
Appendix D: Informed Consent/Information Sheet – Focus Group Participation 230
Appendix E: Focus Group Protocol 233
Appendix F: Recruitment Letter – Classroom Observation Participation 235
Appendix G: Informed Consent/Information Sheet – Classroom Observation 237
Appendix H: Observation Protocol 240
Appendix I: Research Analysis Plan 241
Appendix J: Evaluation Immediately Following a Course 244
Appendix K: Blended Evaluation Delayed for a Period After Course Completion 246
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 9

List of Tables
Table 1: Organizational Mission, Global Goal, and Stakeholder Performance Goals 21
Table 2: Knowledge Influences 53
Table 3: Motivation Influences 61
Table 4: Organizational Influences 69
Table 5: Outcomes, Metrics, and Methods for External and Internal Indicators 172
Table 6: Critical Behaviors with Assessment Metrics, Methods, and Timing 173
Table 7: Required Drivers to Support Critical Behaviors 174
Table 8: Components of Learning for Newly Designed Writing-Intensive Courses 181

FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 10

List of Figures
Figure A: Writing Skills for Degree Attainment, Employability, and Active Citizenry 73
Figure B: Institutional Data Report Student Participation Disaggregated by Major 102
Figure C. Perceived Consequences Associated with Writing Skills 130
Figure D: Number of Unspecified General Education Required Units per College 138

FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 11

Abstract
The overall purpose of this study was to understand students’ experiences with writing and
writing education at a predominantly undergraduate university within the California State
University system in an effort to determine how well the institution was responding to students’
college readiness in English and guiding them towards degree attainment, employability, and
civic engagement. The researcher investigated the following questions: to what extent the
institution’s curriculum helps students meet CSU upper-division writing proficiency standards;
to what extent students’ writing proficiency levels influence the achievement gap and/or play a
role in students’ time to graduation; and the knowledge, motivation, and organizational
influences related to improving students’ levels of writing proficiency for academic success,
workforce readiness, and civic engagement. The mixed methods study was conducted during the
fall term of academic year 2017-2018 and included a student survey, interviews and focus group
discussion sessions, classroom observations, document and institutional data analysis. Data
collected from over 7,000 undergraduate students revealed that college readiness in English
continues to play a role in student writing success well beyond completion of first-year
developmental writing coursework. As students progress towards degree completion, instructor
feedback influences both students’ knowledge of effective communicative choices and
motivation to improve their rhetoric and writing skills for personal, professional, and public
purposes. In order to attain institutional performance outcomes relative to degree attainment, the
culture of writing on college campuses must foster students’ reflective and reflexive practices
and intentionally design opportunities for the transfer of learning across class levels and
disciplines.

FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 12

CHAPTER ONE: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY
Background of the Problem
College readiness and completion long have been problems of practice in the United
States, but in the ever-expanding and competitive global market of the 21
st
century, it is more
pressing that the U.S. educational system resolves how best to prepare citizens for workforce and
civic participation. When education administrators and public policy experts explore the reasons
for gaps in student performance, fingers point often to students’ reading and writing skills.
Whereas both K-12 and postsecondary U.S.-based institutions recognize that students’ literacy
skills impact their academic and professional achievement, the system as a whole has been
unable to prepare the nation’s students to meet expected writing proficiency levels at
postsecondary entry and exit.
Despite years of thoughtfully developed K-12 programs across the U.S., federal data
indicates that between 25 and 40 percent of students enrolled in four-year public institutions of
higher education (IHEs) are considered underprepared for college (Jimenez, Sargrad, Morales, &
Thompson, 2016; Parsad & Lewis, 2003; Smith Jaggars & West Stacey, 2014). Studies that
track the underprepared through their college experience conclude that first-time, first-year
college students who require developmental coursework graduate at lower rates, between 12%
and 37% less than their college-ready peers (Attewell, Lavin, Domina, & Levey, 2006; Chen,
2016; Kirst & Venezia, 2006; Parsad & Lewis, 2003; Tierney & Garcia, 2011; Tierney &
Rodriguez, 2014). Writing skills are among those upon which the nation has relied for decades
to assess students’ college readiness. Yet, while writing skills indeed impact a student’s college
admission, written communication skills also rate highly important for success post graduation
(Casner-Lotto & Barrington, 2006; Hart Research Associates, 2015).
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 13

IHEs must be attentive to the expected knowledge and skills for graduate employability,
to which a number of studies attest (Cai, 2013; Hart Research Associates, 2015; Kellogg &
Whiteford, 2009). Research indicates that college graduates currently do not possess the writing
skills needed to succeed in the workforce (Carter & Harper, 2013; Casner-Lotto & Barrington,
2006; Eisner, 2010; Hart Research Associates, 2015; Qenani, MacDougall, & Sexton, 2014;
Simkin, Crews, & Groves, 2012). Results from Hart Research Associates’ (2015) most recent
employer survey conducted for the Association of American Colleges and Universities
(AAC&U) indicate that only 27% of the 400 employers surveyed think that college students are
well prepared in written communication. According to an extensive review of the literature on
graduate employability (Eisner, 2010), 21
st
century learners lack adequate writing skills as well
as the ability to think critically. As a result of his findings, Eisner (2010) points to the need for
educators to consider continuously the expectations of employers, including effective written
communication skills, when designing learning environments to support students in their
transition from college to the workplace. Thus, while for decades education researchers have
focused heavily on students’ writing skills for college readiness, the system has reached a point
where it must commit to enriching students’ writing skills throughout the college experience to
support degree completion and graduate employability.
But postsecondary institutions must commit to more than helping students develop skills
for post-degree employability. So, too, must IHEs prepare students to develop as engaged,
responsible citizens. Boyer (1996), Wood (2012), and Durose, Mangan, Needham, Rees, and
Hilton (2013) designate the university as a site well situated to infuse critical literacy for
workforce and civic duties into the student experience because of its intellectual capital and
knowledge generation. The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 14

Engagement (2017) reports that only 50% of the voting-age youth participated in the 2016
election. While the National Association of Scholars warns that teaching college students “new
civics” pushes students toward progressive, left wing political activism (Randall, 2017), a
college-educated, active citizenry is necessary not only to affect market change but also social
change (Musil, 2015; Ross, 2012). Active citizens are politically aware and committed both to
sustaining the democratic experiment and improving complex sociocultural environments for the
benefit of the public good (Alexander & Jarratt, 2014; Ansell, 2012; Gilyard, 2008; Guthrie &
Callahan, 2016; Musil, 2015; Ross, 2012; West, 2004). In short, college students must gain 21
st

century skills to participate responsibly as local, regional, national, and global citizens.
Importance of Addressing the Problem
Gaps in college and post-college career readiness in English is important to examine
because studies suggest that underprepared first-time students—those whose entrance
examinations and/or college applications indicate that developmental writing instruction is
required—struggle to succeed at earning their college degree more than their college-ready peers
(Attewell et al., 2006; Kirst & Venezia, 2006; Parsad & Lewis, 2003; Tierney & Garcia, 2011).
This study focused specifically on writing skills for readiness, employability, and active citizenry
because studies reveal that writing remains a barrier for college, professional and civic success,
specifically for those from underserved populations (Byrd & MacDonald, 2005; Colyar & Stich,
2011; Flores & Drake, 2014). In a paper requested by the chairman of the Secretary of
Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education, Kirst and Venezia (2006) suggest
that the U.S. Department of Education should go beyond improving access to college and focus
on success in college. In the coming decade, over half the jobs in the U.S. will require some
level of college completion (Tierney & Rodriguez, 2014) and employers will expect workers to
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 15

have written communication skills (Carnevale, Smith, & Strohl, 2010). So, too, must college
graduates possess the skills necessary to participate in the solving of complex local, regional,
national, and global problems. College readiness in English is imperative therefore not only for
increasing access to higher education and degree completion for all the nation’s students but also
for a well-prepared workforce and citizenry.
Because students’ writing skills help to determine college success, and because the U.S.
Department of Education has a stated goal to increase the nation’s number of college graduates,
college readiness and degree completion are important to examine at a national level. Yet,
concomitant with degree completion, IHEs must pay careful attention to how they are preparing
students for workforce and civic duties upon graduation. According to studies conducted by
Hart Research Associates (2013, 2015) for the AAC&U, nine out of ten employers judge college
graduates as poorly prepared for the workforce; specifically, employers suggest that nearly 75%
of graduates have poor written and oral communication skills (Hart Research Associates, 2015).
Post-secondary institutions must enhance writing skills so that the nation’s students are better
prepared to contribute to society (Alexander & Jarratt, 2014; Gilyard, 2008; Jenkins, 2016).
Doing so will help the U.S. meet its need for a well-educated workforce and active cadre of
citizens.
The nation as a whole must continue to develop its citizens to meet global economic and
social demand, and California is at the forefront of this endeavor. The Public Policy Institute of
California indicates that the state is facing a shortfall of college graduates and must close the gap
by 2025 in order to stay competitive in the nation’s economy (Johnson, Cuellar Mejia, & Bohn,
2015). In response, in August of 2016, the CSU Chancellor’s Office established the Graduation
Initiative (GI) in which each of the 23 CSU campuses is responsible for narrowing its
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 16

achievement gap and improving graduation rates by 2025. According to a recent study by The
Education Trust, in the last decade IHEs across the nation managed to narrow the achievement
gap between white and underrepresented student groups by less than one percent (Eberle-Sudré,
Welch, & Nichols, 2015). For the CSU campus site
1
of this study, the GI entails addressing an
11% graduation gap for underrepresented student groups by 2025. In comparison to national
data, then, the CSU GI set forth what seems to be an unattainable goal, but one that nevertheless
must be pursued.
Setting aside what seems like the impossible, CSS is of course examining programs and
processes in an effort to understand and address barriers to degree attainment because of the
campus and system-wide commitment “to empower students to achieve their academic goals in
as timely and effective a manner possible” (CSU Office of the Chancellor, 2016). One such
barrier is student demonstration of writing proficiency. Admission into CSS is competitive, and
less than 1% of first-time first-year students are identified as underprepared to succeed in English
(California State University, 2017). The campus has never published disaggregated data to
identify the makeup of its underprepared incoming student population, yet it is safe to say in
comparison with national data that the majority of those who are deemed not college ready in
English come from underserved groups, including African American, Latinx, and international
populations (Howell, 2011; Smith Jaggars & West Stacey, 2014; Tierney & Duncheon, 2015;
Tierney & Sablan, 2014). The makeup of the CSS student population is largely domestic: 1.8%
of the 20,049 students on campus for academic year 2015-2016 were international students.
Regardless, of those required to satisfy the system-wide remediation mandate at CSS, 100% do
so by the end of their first year on campus. But, while less than 1% of the campus’ student

1
For purposes of anonymity, the CSU campus featured in this study hereafter will be referred to
as Cal State Steam (CSS).
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 17

population enters the institution underprepared, 11% graduate at a slower rate than their white
peers.
To be sure, there are a variety of causes for this achievement gap, but it is appropriate to
include writing proficiency among them. Based on unpublished campus data of students’
Graduation Writing Assessment Requirement (GWAR) completion, the achievement gap at CSS
manifests when students attempt to fulfill the GWAR: about 24% fail to do so upon their first
attempt, and about 3% need one-to-one assistance for one or more academic terms before their
skills are such that they can succeed and earn their degrees. At least 10 to 12 students each year
are denied graduation and leave the university without a diploma because they do not satisfy the
GWAR. Furthermore, a sort through the 24% of students who struggle to complete the campus’s
GWAR reveals that it is a comprised of underrepresented student groups. For instance, a simple
disaggregate of unpublished campus GWAR data indicates that the first-attempt pass rate for
self-identified multilingual writers is 46% in comparison to the general pass rate of 76%. Such
unequal performance outcomes require organizational change, change in which “campus
members can be the creators of the conditions that result in [more] equitable outcomes”
(Bensimon, 2005, p. 101). Coupled with other potential barriers, it is clear that CSS must
examine its writing program in order to meet its GI 2025 objective. In alignment with the
national and statewide call for an increase in the number of citizens who earn a college degree
(Johnson & Sengupta, 2009; Johnson et al., 2015), policymakers and educators at CSS must
address this issue.
Organizational Context and Mission
CSS, a predominantly undergraduate institution with six colleges, is an elite campus
within the California State University (CSU) system: approximately 58,000 student applicants
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competed for the 5,120 openings on campus for the fall of 2016 (CSS, 2017). CSS’ mission
speaks to its unique, comprehensive identity in that the campus signature pedagogy promotes
applied learning, and the institution embraces cross-disciplinary experiences among the sciences,
technology, engineering, arts, and math (President’s Office, 2014).
CSS has a student population of about 20,000 students, and according to CSUMentor
(2016) campus facts, 58% of those students are White, non-Hispanic/Latinx. While a variety of
other ethnicities are represented on campus, of note are the 12% Asian, non-Hispanic/Latinx
students; the 16% Hispanic/Latinx students; and the 0.8% Black, non-Hispanic/Latinx students.
The data also reports 1.8% of its students are non-resident alien, or international. CSS’ strategic
initiatives include increasing diversity on campus, both with out-of-state and international
students. The university is also committed to improving campus climate. Progressive writing
instruction and student support systems must be in place to reach such goals, especially because,
as previously stated, research shows that both underserved domestic and international students
struggle to achieve at the same levels as their better served peers (Eberle-Sudré et al., 2015).
Contextually, then, CSS leadership intends to improve upon its campus culture in a variety of
ways. The CSU system has placed expectations on the institution to improve performance as
well.
Organizational Goal
By 2025, CSS expects each of its 23 campuses to enhance student success by increasing
both 4-year and 6-year graduation rates and narrowing achievement gaps as indexed by student
persistence and graduation rates for subgroups of students, including transfer students,
underrepresented students, and students with low socioeconomic status
2
. Though the CSU

2
The CSU Office of the Chancellor (2016) uses Pell Grant funding as a marker of low
socioeconomic status (SES); therefore, in this study, the Pell Grant serves as proxy for low SES.
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 19

initially committed to improving 4- and 6-year graduation rates back in 2009, in response to
California’s Assembly Bill 1602, the system set out to revisit the commitment and re-establish
the goals as part of its GI 2025 strategic plan. According to the CSU’s GI Report (2016),
graduation completion data from “five similar but higher performing institutions” were
considered when setting the goals for a particular campus (p. 4). The CSU’s goal to improve
students’ time to degree attainment at each of its campuses is intended to situate the system
among top public postsecondary institutions across the nation (California State University,
2016).
One measure that influences students’ progress toward degree completion is writing
proficiency, as assessed via the GWAR. In order for CSS to attain its GI 2025 goals of
increasing graduation rates and narrowing achievement gaps, CSS students must increase their
upper-division writing proficiency levels and complete the GWAR. Students across the
curriculum should demonstrate growth in writing skills gained from Early Start English,
developmental, and General Education (GE) lower-division writing coursework and applied to
their work in upper-division courses; complete the GWAR by the end of their junior year;
demonstrate career-ready writing skills in senior project or capstone courses; and earn their
degrees on time. The system and CSS have set particular 2025 performance objectives and must
foster a campus culture to support goal attainment, but the students are primarily responsible for
meeting 2025 GI objectives.
Description of Stakeholder Groups
CSS students are the primary stakeholders who benefit from the institution’s stated goals
of increasing graduation rates and narrowing writing achievement gaps. According to
CSUMentor (2016) data, there are a total of 20,944 students at CSS, and more than half of the
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 20

student population is White, non-Hispanic/Latinx. Less than one percent of the student
population requires remediation during their first year on campus. That is, at the entry-level, on
average, about 35 students are deemed insufficiently college ready in English. CSU Freshman
Proficiency data indicates that those students demonstrate full proficiency before their second
year on campus (California State University, 2017). Achievement in writing proficiency
decreases, however, at the upper-division. Based on unpublished data reports generated from the
university’s Writing Proficiency Exam (WPE) each term, about 26% of the student population
fails their first attempt to demonstrate upper-division writing proficiency. After the second
attempt, 3% of the student population still struggles to fulfill the requirement, and ten to twelve
students each term do not earn their degree because they have not completed the GWAR.
Students directly profit from the institution’s goal to increase graduation rates and narrow
achievement gaps, and CSS faculty members directly contribute to the achievement of those
goals. In particular, about 64 sections of GWAR-approved English courses are offered each
academic year, and English Department instructors teaching those courses design the GWAR
component of the curriculum differently. While the institution has not yet proven that the lack of
consistency in these courses leads to less than optimal instruction, students would likely benefit
from more coordination of upper-division writing instruction. Currently, some GWAR course
instructors design an in-class essay exam based on the contents of the course and others use a
prompt separate from course content. Further, some classes are 50 minutes, and thus students
have only 50 minutes to write, while other classes are 1 hour and 50 minutes, so students have
longer to respond to the exam. Perhaps most important, it is not clear if writing instruction
occurs in these classes: GWAR-approved upper-division English classes are not writing classes
but literature classes that offer an in-class essay exam, which counts as the GWAR component of
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 21

the course. Finally, some departments across campus are unhappy about the fact that the English
department is the only department approved to offer GWAR classes. Without an infrastructure
in place to train and oversee faculty across campus to do so, however, there currently is no
option for instructors from other subject areas to design and offer GWAR-approved classes.
The administration does not have a university-wide writing committee established to
oversee writing education and writing support on campus. Instead, writing is split among the
English Department, which oversees first-year writing; the university’s Writing and Rhetoric
Center (WRC), which oversees the institution’s system-wide mandates of remediation and
GWAR (Executive Order No. 665, 1997) as well as the university’s writing support services; and
the Academic Senate’s General Education Committee, which approves lower and upper-division
writing-intensive GE course offerings, including GWAR-approved English courses. Because the
administration can provide leadership to implement best institutional practices of writing
instruction and student support, it therefore also serves as a stakeholder for achieving the
institution’s performance goals (see Table 1).
Table 1

Organizational Mission, Global Goal, and Stakeholder Performance Goals
Organizational Mission
CSS fosters teaching, scholarship, and service in a learn-by-doing environment in which students, staff,
and faculty are partners in discovery. As a polytechnic university, CSS promotes the application of
theory to practice. As a comprehensive institution, CSS provides a balanced education in the arts,
sciences, and technology, while encouraging cross-disciplinary and co-curricular experiences. As an
academic community, CSS values free inquiry, cultural and intellectual diversity, mutual respect, civic
engagement, and social and environmental responsibility.

Organizational Global Goal
By 2025, CSS will enhance student success by improving the 4-year graduation rate for first-year students
from 46% to 71% and the 6-year graduation rate for first-year students from 76% to 92%. The two-year
graduation rates for transfer students will increase from 33% to 45% and the four-year graduation rate for
transfer students will increase from 83% to 93%. CSS will also zero out its 11% achievement gap for
underrepresented minorities and its 9% achievement gap for Pell Grant recipients.

Stakeholder 1 Stakeholder 2 Stakeholder 3
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 22

Certainly, students, faculty, and administrators must work together to sustain the mission
of the institution, with its expressed values of civic engagement and social and environmental
responsibility. They also must work together to meet the university’s global goal, but in regards
to the global goal, while faculty and administrators influence student achievement (faculty
members do so in the classroom and in advising/mentoring roles, and administrators do so in
their establishment of procedures and policies) it is the students who achieve. As such, students
were the stakeholder group for this study.
Although a more complete analysis of upper-division writing proficiency at CSS would
have involved all stakeholder groups who contribute to the achievement of the institution’s stated
performance goals, for practical purposes, this study focused on the student experience. While
the study explored writing proficiency from the student perspective as a whole, two subsets of
the student population specifically were examined: underrepresented student groups, including
CSS Students CSS Faculty CSS Administration
Stakeholder 1
Proficiencies/Competencies
Necessary to Reach the Global
Goal
• Gain reflective practices
to help identify writing
weaknesses and seek
support to improve skills
• Demonstrate advanced
writing proficiency via
the GWAR by the end of
junior year

Stakeholder 2
Proficiencies/Competencies
Necessary to Reach the Global
Goal
• Apply best practices of
writing instruction into
the curriculum
• Support students,
recognizing that
students’ language skills
vary based on language
difference among
discourse communities
Stakeholder 3
Proficiencies/Competencies
Necessary to Reach the Global
Goal
• Design effective
programming to aid
students in their writing
development
• Design effective
programming to aid
faculty in their teaching
development
Stakeholder 1
(Intermediate) Goal
By December 2017 students will
complete a survey and participate
in focus groups to provide input
into both the development of
their upper-division writing skills
and experiences with writing
education on campus
Stakeholder 2
(Intermediate) Goal
By September 2018, faculty will
offer discipline-specific, upper-
division writing-intensive
coursework that certifies
students’ advanced levels of
writing proficiency
Stakeholder 3
(Intermediate) Goal
By January 2018, administration
will employ a university-wide
writing committee to improve
writing support services, offer
faculty training, and design
campus-wide curricular
objectives for writing education
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 23

international/multilingual students, first generation students, and Pell Grant recipients. The CSU
has set for the institution graduation rate goals for all students, but it also established
organizational goals related to the achievement gaps of underrepresented populations and Pell
Grant recipients. Because this evaluation study was designed to assist the campus in reaching its
GI goals in 2025, data collected from all students was disaggregated to highlight the
underrepresented, multilingual, and low-income student experience in particular.
It was important to include students’ voices in this study in large part because curricular
decisions often are made without consulting students, and students were the sole recipients of
any curricular design/re-design. Further, while 100% student completion of the GWAR is an
intermediate performance goal in relation to the global goal of narrowing achievement gaps on
campus and improving time to graduation, students had not yet been invited to discuss their
experiences with the GWAR specifically or the writing curriculum generally. Students must be
consulted. Then, after changes are implemented, progress toward the goals can be tracked by
assessing pass/fail rates of the WPE, completion rates in GWAR-approved classes, and success
rates of the GWAR Portfolio Program. As well, students’ completion of senior projects and
other writing-in-the-majors requirements can be assessed to determine to what extent CSS’
writing curriculum helps students meet CSU proficiency standards and to what extent do CSS
students’ writing proficiency levels influence the achievement gap and/or play a role in students’
time to graduation. If CSS wants to narrow achievement gaps and decrease time to graduation,
then students must demonstrate improved writing proficiency at the upper-division level.
Project Purpose and Research Questions
The purpose of this project was to conduct a gap analysis to examine the knowledge,
motivation, and organizational influences that interfere with student achievement in writing
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 24

proficiency in relation to completion of the GWAR and graduation. To complete the analysis,
the study commenced with the generation of a list of potential barriers to improving students’
writing proficiency. Those barriers then were examined systematically to determine whether or
not they are actually interfering with student success. While a complete gap analysis would have
focused on all stakeholders connected to student success at CSS, students were the primary
stakeholders of this study.
As such, the questions that guided this study were as follows:
1. To what extent does the institution’s curriculum help students meet CSU upper-division
writing proficiency standards?
2. To what extent do students’ writing proficiency levels influence the achievement gap
and/or play a role in students’ time to graduation?
3. What are the knowledge, motivation, and organizational influences related to improving
students’ levels of writing proficiency and preparing them for workforce and civic
responsibilities?
Conceptual and Methodological Framework
This study implemented Clark and Estes’ (2008) gap analysis framework to help CSS
identify potential gaps between the actual and preferred levels of student writing performance,
which may improve 4- and 6-year graduation rates and increase achievement by
underrepresented students and Pell Grant recipients. The systematic, analytical methodological
framework for this research is a qualitative case study with descriptive statistics. The study
generated assumed knowledge, motivation, and organizational (KMO) influences that interfere
with CSS’ goal achievement based on both related literature and personal knowledge. KMO
influences were assessed using a qualitative approach that included reviewing scholarly
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 25

literature, conducting a survey and focus groups, observing writing-intensive class sessions,
analyzing course syllabi and degree program requirements, and examining pre-existing
institutional data such as English Placement Test scores and WPE pass/fail rates. The social turn
in the field of rhetoric and composition aligns with the overarching theory that framed this
research: critical literacy. This study explored and recommended in a comprehensive manner
research-based solutions to increasing writing proficiency from college readiness to graduate
employability and active citizenry in an effort to assist in narrowing CSS’ achievement gaps,
decreasing students’ time to graduation, and preparing students for post-degree success.
Definition of Terms
Below are the key terms used frequently in this dissertation.
Achievement gap: In discussions of student performance, the achievement gap recognizes
the disparity of success among college ready and underprepared student groups. The gap is
traditionally measured by readiness, persistence, and degree attainment and is categorized
through a disaggregation of data by race/ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status.
Active citizenry: For the purposes of this study, active citizenry refers to a collective of
individual members of a country who participate in activities intended for the public good, which
may extend beyond the nation-state. An active citizenry engages in activities that improve upon
political, social, and environmental realms and furthers the values and commitments of the
democratic experiment. An important distinction between good citizenry and active citizenry is
that the latter critically engages in society and takes part in affecting positive change.
College readiness: College readiness refers to the construct by which a student’s ability
to participate and succeed in college-level coursework is judged. There are national, statewide,
and local standards in place to determine whether students are college ready.
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 26

Critical literacy: This theory draws from social critical theorists who examine relational
inequities and injustices. Within the realm of education, critical social theorists view knowledge
and knowledge production as a means to empower individuals to act as agents of social change.
Critical literacy promotes the principle that individuals participate in the design and questioning
of all communicative acts, or texts, to observe and challenge power and knowledge constructs.
Graduate employability: A relatively new term used among global business and
education researchers seeking to understand and discern college students’ career readiness,
graduate employability is the standard by which a student’s preparedness for post-degree jobs is
judged.
Proficiency: Proficiency is a demonstrated competence in a certain skill or subject. It is
important to note that competence is a social construct in that it is others who determine the
degree to which someone is proficient in a skill or subject, and their standards for doing so vary
based on specific contexts.
Remediation: Quite literally, remediation refers to the fixing, or remedying, of
something; for the purposes of this study, remediation is the system established to address first-
time, first-year students’ lack of writing skills. The CSU uses the term “Remediation Milestone”
to refer to the requirement underprepared students must complete to demonstrate college
readiness in English and/or Math based on system-wide standards. The author of this study
recognizes the problematic nature of the label “remedial” and therefore has chosen to refer,
instead, to students required to complete this milestone as underprepared or developing.
Underrepresented student groups: Often categorically referred to as “underrepresented
minorities” or “URMs,” this study uses the term “underrepresented student groups” instead since
at this point in time some ethnic groups within this classification are no longer minorities in the
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 27

State of California. For the purposes of this study, underrepresented student groups are defined
by the CSU as those from “underserved communities,” including Latinx, African American,
Native American, Asian American, and Pacific Islander populations (Office of Federal Relations,
2015).
While there are a number of other important concepts used throughout this research
project, it is essential that the reader understand the above terms in order to engage fully in this
evaluation study of writing skills, postsecondary achievement, and post-degree success.
Organizational Structure of the Study
This study is organized into five chapters. The first chapter has provided the reader with
key concepts and terminology commonly found in a discussion about writing proficiency for
achievement, employability and active citizenry. In addition, this chapter presents important
information about the organization’s mission, goals, and stakeholders, as well as a review of the
study’s conceptual framework. Chapter Two provides a review of current literature surrounding
the scope of the study. Specifically, chapter two addresses the topics of college readiness and
remediation, the achievement gap, graduation rates, employability, and active citizenry in the 21
st

century. Chapter Two also details the knowledge, motivation, and organizational influences
examined in this study through the lens of critical literacy. Chapter Three outlines the study’s
methodology in terms of participants, data collection instrumentation, and analysis. In Chapter
Four, the data and results are described and analyzed. Finally, Chapter Five provides
recommendations for practice based on data and literature and offers recommendations for
implementation and evaluation of CSS’ writing program.

FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 28

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter outlines the literature related to student writing proficiency as a contributing
factor in postsecondary graduation rates, graduate employability, and post-degree active
citizenry. The first section provides a historical overview of remediation, college readiness in
English, and the achievement gap. The second segment addresses the writing proficiency levels
expected for graduation, workforce development, and 21
st
century civic engagement. The
chapter ends with an analysis of student writing skills development through the lens of
educational psychology literature utilizing the gap analysis dimensions of knowledge,
motivation, and organization.
College Readiness in English and Writing Skills for Graduate Employability
At the apex of national concern for students’ literacy skills in the 1970s was the 1975
Newsweek article, “Why Johnny Can’t Write,” which cites declining test scores and blames both
the advent of the television and creative approaches to the teaching of English for students’ poor
written communication skills. Above all else, the article argues that higher education must
recapture its commitment to writing instruction (Sheils, 1975). In response, the California State
University (CSU) Board of Trustees created the 1976 Proposal on Student Writing Skills (REP 5-
76-4), which recognized “the need for continued attention to the area of student writing skills”
and resolved both to endorse a system-wide “writing proficiency/diagnostic exam” to identify
those in need of English remediation at the entry level and to develop a measure of student
writing competency “as a requirement for graduation” (Board of Trustees Committee on
Educational Policy, 1976). Since its inception forty years ago, college readiness in English and
writing competency for graduation have been important components of writing programs at all
23 CSU campuses across the state. Despite the mandates’ mainstay in CSU system-wide
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 29

educational policy, critics argue that college readiness in English is a construct and thus an
invalid measure of students’ literacy skills (Almeida, 2015; Conley, 2007; Duncheon, 2016;
Ritter, 2009). Conley (2007) explains that there are multiple dimensions associated with what it
means to succeed in college, thus it is difficult to measure effectively students’ readiness. In the
opening chapters of The Problem of College Readiness (Tierney & Duncheon, 2015), both
Duncheon (2015) and Almeida (2015) reference the elusive nature of college readiness: because
the definition of preparedness is vague, the concept and the mechanisms by which it is
determined at local and state levels are, in essence, constructed. Not only is college readiness in
English difficult to categorize, but also scholars contend that what it means to demonstrate
writing competence at the level of a college graduate is ever-evolving, particularly given that
writing models change for different purposes and audiences and with new technologies and a
shift to world Englishes (Yancey, 2009).
College Readiness in English
While college readiness is a relatively new term, national concerns about whether or not
students have the knowledge and skills required to succeed in institutions of higher education
(IHEs) have existed in various forms since at least the late 1800s (Barnes & Slate, 2013;
Connors, 1997; Crouch & McNenny, 2000; Greene & McAlexander, 2008; Lamos, 2000;
O’Neil, 2007; Sheils, 1975; Sublette, 1973; Tierney & Duncheon, 2015; Tsao, 2005). As defined
by Conley (2008), readiness refers to the preparation a student has to succeed in general
coursework at a four-year postsecondary institution. Students who are deemed underprepared
for college are often required to what some institutions term “remediate,” or correct their
deficiencies. The application of remediation to support student learning has a long history in the
United States.
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 30

A Historic Overview of English Remediation
Basic writing instruction, 1900 – 1960. Rhetoric and composition scholars point to
Harvard University as the originator of the first-year composition course in 1872 (Connors,
1997; Skinnell, 2014). Whether or not one agrees with that history, it is a fact that some writers
have been defined as “basic” since the outset of the postsecondary education composition course
(Barnes & Slate, 2013; Greene & McAlexander, 2008; Ritter, 2009; Skinnell, 2014). In short,
historical documents indicate that writers have been expected to remedy their lack of proficiency
through various means since the 1880s when Harvard established its entrance exam (Connors,
1997; Lerner, 2009). Other institutions soon followed suit, and remedial education in the U.S.
began.
Yale’s awkward squad and Dartmouth’s writing clinic. Traditional means of writing
remediation included additional coursework and one-to-one tutoring—both outside the standard
curriculum. At Yale, beginning around the late 1910s, students who were deemed deficient in
their writing skills were assigned to the Awkward Squad and were pulled out of traditional
English classes to remedy their writing problems (Noyes, 1929; Ritter, 2009). Similarly, in the
late 1930s at Dartmouth, students’ poor writing skills became the focus of a co-curricular clinic
in which an instructor would analyze and remediate student deficiencies (Lerner, 2007 & 2009;
Ritter, 2009). While any student could take advantage the clinic’s services, faculty believed the
students who needed the services to be defective (Lerner, 2007). In both settings, the Ivy League
institutions sought to correct their underprepared students, who were viewed as outsiders (Adler-
Kassner & Harrington, 2012).
Project English and the Dartmouth seminar. By the mid 1950s, students’ writing skills,
or lack thereof, continued to be part of the national conversation, particularly with the increase of
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 31

student enrollment in IHEs post WWII (Lerner, 2009; O’Neil, 2007; Sublette, 1973). Dartmouth
conducted a three-year study of its writing clinic and determined to close it down in 1960 largely
in an attempt to re-brand the institution as one whose students did not need remediation (Lerner,
2009). While some elite IHEs intended to situate themselves above the reality of underprepared
students by eliminating remedial practices from their curriculum, in 1962 a national project
began in which writing educators aimed to use federal funding to research and reform the
teaching of English and better prepare students for college success. Project English was a seven-
year study with 12 centers across the country with different approaches to reform. In general,
Project English aimed to better prepare students for college by revising K-12 curriculum to
include a deep study of the principles and processes of sentence construction (Lerner, 2009;
O’Neil, 2007). The project came to a slow halt after the Dartmouth Seminar of 1966, a month-
long assembly organized to gather best English instructional practices from the U.K. and U.S.
and create a more joint approach to the language arts. The Dartmouth Seminar established a
focus on student-centered classroom activities less related to syntactical analysis and more
related to literature, rhetoric, and grammar (O’Neil, 2007).
Basic writing and admissions policies. Writing education reform at postsecondary
institutions largely coincides with changes in student enrollment. Lerner (2009) explains,
The four points at which enrollments have increased by the greatest percentage in
relation to the preceding era are 1879, 1929, 1949, and 1969 (U.S. Department of
Education). At each of these points, colleges and universities were not only faced
with far larger numbers of students than they had previously seen, but the students
themselves were far more diverse—whether in terms of preparation, race,
ethnicity, or socioeconomic status—than students of the past. The methods of
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 32

teaching that had worked—or at least that were not met with much resistance—
were simply inadequate. (p. 24-25)
In each of these moments, research indicates that the question about how best to address
students’ writing “deficiencies” was at the forefront of the national/institutional conversation.
These “literacy crises,” as Soliday (2002) point out, must be blamed on someone or something
and blame is often assigned to a particular group or institution. To be sure, gaps in students’
readiness and the remediation practices established to address such gaps are concomitant with
institutions’ and instructors’ gaps in readiness (Darling-Hammond, 2007). In short, the issue
long has been the challenge of readying IHEs and the faculty who teach in them to serve their
unique and ever-changing student populations.
The case of CUNY. The City University of New York (CUNY) opened admissions to all
high school graduates in the fall of 1970, and the shift in policy drastically altered the writing
classroom (Lamos, 2000; Tsao, 2005). In that first year, about 90% of newly enrolled students
took at least one developmental writing class (Reeves, 2002). Educators and educational
administrators differed in their opinions about the increasing need for basic writing instruction.
On the one hand, some believed underprepared meant incapable—that students outside of the
norm were deficient and thus in need of remedying because there was something wrong with
them. On the other hand, educators like Mina Shaugnessy (1977) pushed against the deficit
model. She presented an alternative ideology, one that affirmed all students’ writing abilities and
valued their complex use of language. Those within the field of rhetoric and composition have
since embraced Shaughnessy’s beliefs about students enrolled in basic writing courses (Adler-
Kassner &Harrington, 2012). Educational policy experts also seem to embrace this belief; yet,
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 33

placement tests upon admissions and non-credit bearing coursework to “remediate”
underprepared students are still common practice at U.S. IHEs.
Admissions and today’s student. While admissions policies at postsecondary institutions
across the U.S. continue to evolve, practices shaped by educational reforms of the 20
th
century
still influence the experiences of today’s college student (Crouch & McNenny, 2000; Chait &
Venezia, 2009; Lamos, 2000; Otte & Williams Mlynarczyk, 2010; Tierney & Hentschke, 2011).
According to the National Center for Education Statistics (2015), a projected 21 million students
will enroll in a degree-granting postsecondary institution in fall 2017. In California, IPEDS data
shows 3,700,579 students enrolled in postsecondary institutions in 2013-2014. At CSS, the
makeup of the 4,279 admitted first-time, first-years in fall of 2016 included 2,467 White/non-
Latinx students; 510 Asian Americans; 421 Mexican Americans; 351 students with an ethnicity
of two or more races; 210 other Latinx students; and 28 African American students, among
others (California State University, 2017). The diverse makeup of those admitted to college each
year influences readiness and achievement gaps at the national, state, and system levels.
College Readiness and the Achievement Gap
State interventions for college preparedness. The accountability movement of the mid
20
th
century encouraged both federal and state policy implementation to address college
readiness of the nation’s high school graduates (Crouch & McNenny, 2000; Goen-Salter, 2008;
Goudas & Boylan, 2012; Greene & McAlexander, 2008; Howell, Kurlaender, & Grodsky, 2010;
Rose, 2011; Tierney & Duncheon, 2015; Tierney & Garcia, 2011). In California specifically, in
the late 1970s the CSU Board of Trustees implemented math and English placement tests to
assess and account for students’ abilities to succeed in college-level courses (Garcia, 2015;
White, 1989) and evolved to include early assessment of students’ readiness (Garcia, 2015;
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 34

Goen-Salter, 2008; Venezia & Voloch, 2012). Early assessment at the junior level of high
school provides students, districts, and statewide IHEs a snapshot of students’ levels of
preparedness. Such levels do not determine a student’s postsecondary admissions but do inform
college readiness.
What it means to be college ready in English. Studies show that what it means to be
college ready is oft debated (Porter & Polikoff, 2012; Tierney & Duncheon, 2015). Ritter (2009)
explains that historically the definition of a “basic” writer, or one deemed not ready to succeed in
college English classes, has been locally situated and connected to the mission of a particular
institution. In the late 1980s, the social turn of the field of rhetoric and composition complicated
the notion of readiness by recognizing that a variety of discourse communities play a major role
in the construction of students’ readiness for college-level writing. As such, scholars like
Bartholomae (1986) assert that students, particularly basic writers, must invent their own version
of academic discourse unless educators help to make them aware of the university’s conventions
and expectations. Of course, a wide variety of discourse communities exist within any given
environment, particularly a university. In their most recent research, Almeida (2015) and
Duncheon (2015) conclude that the notion of college readiness is multifaceted and therefore
difficult to define.
Measures to determine readiness. Perhaps because policy analysts understand college
readiness to contain a broad spectrum of definitions and expectations (Callan, Finney, Kirst,
Usdan, & Venezia, 2006; Shulock, 2010; Tierney & Duncheon, 2015; Venezia, Callan, Finney,
Kirst, & Usdan, 2005), administrators and writing experts differ in their understanding of how to
measure college readiness in English (Crouch & McNenny, 2000; Goen-Salter, 2008; Goudas &
Boylan, 2012; Greene & McAlexander, 2008; Horner, Lu, Jones Royster, & Trimbur, 2011;
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 35

Howell et al., 2010; Rose, 2011; Tierney & Duncheon, 2015; Villanueva, 2013). Conley (2013,
2015) argues for a more robust assessment of readiness, one that includes learning and
transitional skills as well as cognitive strategies and content knowledge. Darling-Hammond,
Wilhoit, and Pittenger (2014), Conley (2015), and Darling-Hammond and Snyder (2015)
advocate for measures that assess more meaningful learning as well. Despite the ongoing debate,
most institutions still rely upon a test-based mechanism to determine readiness (Darling-
Hammond et al., 2014; White, 2005). Harvard University instituted the first written entrance
exam as far back as 1871, and over 100 years later an English placement exam became standard
practice across most IHEs (Connors, 1997; Crouch & McNenny, 2000; Haswell, 2004; White,
1995, 2005). In California, both the CSU and UC system require an entry-level writing exam.
For admissions into the CSU, all high school students complete the Smarter Balanced California
Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) for English-language arts/literacy
during their junior-level; some districts also offer the SAT to students, and some schools offer
Advanced Placement English or dual enrollment courses (Fensterwald, 2017). Assessment
scores/grades thus determine students’ readiness in English for the CSU system. Based on their
ready, conditionally ready, or not ready statuses, until August of 2017, students were either
exempted from or required to take the CSU’s English Placement Test (EPT)
3
despite years of
critique by writing experts of its use as an ineffective and inequitable measure of students’
writing skills (Knudson, Zitzer-Comfort, Quirk, & Alexander, 2008).

3
The California Department of Education considered new measures of college readiness for
2017-2018, including International Baccalaureate courses and the State of Seal of Biliteracy
(Kazanis & Wyatt, 2017), and the CSU Board of Trustees established Executive Order No. 1110
on August 2, 2017, which replaced the EPT with a multiple measures model of college readiness
assessment effective fall of 2018. Despite this shift in policy, students’ high school performance
and pre-college exam scores will still influence students’ placement and underprepared students
will still be required to complete pre-baccalaureate, developmental coursework prior to and/or
during their first term on campus.
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 36

Underprepared student populations. Studies show that students from traditionally
underserved populations and lower socioeconomic statuses are not ready to succeed in college
writing courses. Underprepared students also persist to earn their four-year degrees at lesser
rates than their better-prepared peers (Bensimon, 2005; Darling-Hammond, 2007; Patton, 2015).
Further, while one cannot assume that the language proficiency of all underserved domestic and
international students is below that of native English-speaking, better-served students, studies
indicate that multilingual speakers do in fact reflect lower levels of English proficiency on
placement exams and thereby are at higher rates required to complete basic writing programs in
college (Flores & Drake, 2014; Gutierrez, Morales, & Martinez, 2009; Hall, 2014; Kanno &
Varghese, 2010). According to the Migration Policy Institute, in the United States “there were
25.9 million Limited English Proficient (LEP) individuals ages 5 and older” in 2015 (Zong &
Batalova, 2017). Language learners make up a significant portion of the student population at
the state level as well: in spring 2014, there were 1,413,549 English learners in California’s
public schools, which represents about 43.1% of the state’s public school enrollment, and there
was a total of 2,685,793 students whose home language was not English (California Department
of Education, 2014). Overall, California has the highest number of enrolled multilingual
students in its public school system (Payan & Nettles, 2008). It is imperative that California’s
public IHEs improve its support for both international multilingual writers and “native speakers
of unprivileged varieties of English” (Matsuda, 2006, p. 648). Valuing polyglossia among the
state’s student population broadens measures of readiness to account for language difference.
National data on readiness, remediation, and graduation rates. Readiness and
remediation data at the national level indicates that students from traditionally underserved
populations and low socioeconomic status are underprepared for college (Maitre, 2014; National
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 37

Forum on Educational Statistics, 2015). As stated above, with the increase in diverse student
populations so too was there an increase in remediation throughout the 20
th
century. Data
continues to show that students from underserved groups, including Pell Grant recipients, are
underprepared for college (Almeida, 2015; Patton, 2015). As Marsh (2012) points out, there are
a number of challenges associated with using data to drive decisions and design interventions. In
particular, designing generic programs to address localized issues results in ongoing problems.
Addressing such problems is imperative to increase the nation’s graduation rates: currently, one
in three adults in the U.S. (33%) holds a bachelor’s degree or higher, and degree attainment
varies widely among races and ethnicities (Ryan & Bauman, 2016).
California data on readiness, remediation, and graduation rates. According to a report
on higher education and California’s future (Johnson, 2017), California ranks fifth among the
nation in terms of the number of high school graduates (44%) who attend two-year college and
47
th
when considering the number of high school graduates who enroll at four-year colleges.
About 18% of the state’s high school graduates attend the CSU. At the CSU system-wide level,
just under 40% of all first-time, first-year students required remediation with 98% of students
fully proficient after the first year (California State University, 2017). Despite data that suggests
the system has devised an effective approach to better preparing its student population by one
year post admissions, according to Jackson and Cook (2016), “CSU lags behind similar
institutions in four-year graduation rates and has larger graduation gaps between racial/ethnic
groups.” In comparison to its sister campuses, CSS has the smallest number of underprepared
first-time, first-year students (California State University, 2017). Its six-year graduation rate
(83%) is among the highest in the system (California State University, 2017) and above average
in comparison to the national average of 60% (U.S. Department of Education, 2016).
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 38

Writing Skills for Graduate Employability and Active Citizenry
Students are expected to display a certain level of writing proficiency in order to succeed
in college. Indeed, college graduates are expected to possess writing skills required of citizens
who participate in today’s global society. What levels and kinds of written communication skills
are necessary, however, is debatable and often in line with one’s understanding of the purpose of
a college education in the 21
st
century.
The Purpose of a College Education
A utilitarian perspective of higher education. The purpose of a college education has
been debated widely since the inception of the postsecondary system. On one hand of the
debate, some believe that students attend postsecondary institutions largely to gain skills
necessary to join the workforce. Particularly in the 21
st
century, educators like Capelli argue that
IHEs must align more directly their educational programs with the world of work (cited in
National Research Council, 2008). Scholars argue that this approach to educational policy
comes with disastrous effects for IHEs (Giroux, 2002; Johnston, 2011; Letizia, 2016). Letizia
(2016) criticizes the neo-liberal performance-based funding model for higher education because
it replaces the institutional goal to create an educated citizenry with one in which degree
attainment creates a market of consumers.
Workforce development. Despite critiques of a skills-based approach to higher education,
data indicates that IHEs must concern themselves with preparing the nation’s workforce or the
U.S. may risk a shortage of laborers (Johnson et al., 2015; Newman & Winston, 2016). It is no
surprise, then, that in response to the 2016 Inside Higher Ed Survey of College and University
Chief Academic Officers, 83% of the 654 university provosts surveyed indicated that their
universities focus largely on helping students obtain good jobs post graduation (Calderon &
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 39

Jones, 2017). Newman and Winston (2016) argue that the U.S. must improve its post-secondary
vocational and technical training programs in order to produce skilled laborers for the U.S.
market. Whether or not IHEs should rethink their focus, from an economic perspective
workforce development is part and parcel of the purpose of a college education. According to a
report by the Public Policy Institute of California (2013), there will be a shortage of one million
college-education citizens by 2025 if current trends in degree attainment persist, and by 2030
that number could increase to 1.1 million (Johnson et al., 2015). The state legislature 2016-2017
budget calls upon both the UC and CSU systems to develop plans to increase graduation rates
(Golaszewski, Constantouros, Heiman, & Steenhausen, 2017). The CSU 2025 Graduation
Initiative is designed to answer this call, and therefore places workforce development as the top
of the system’s priority.
Writing skills for the workplace. Experts agree that it is difficult to predict the kinds of
skills workers will need in the future (National Research Council, 2008). A report conducted by
the World Economic Forum (2016) indicates that 65% of the world’s currently enrolled students
will be working in jobs that do not yet exist. Despite unknowns, 21
st
century skills develop from
foundational literacies, such as writing skills (World Economic Forum, 2015). In a study to
determine the employability skills that predict workplace performance, Rahmat, Buntat, and
Ayub (2015) found that communication skills, including effective writing strategies, were
consistently mentioned among industry experts; yet, employers continue to express
dissatisfaction with recent college graduates’ writing skills (Cai, 2013; College Board, 2003;
Finch, Hamilton, Baldwin, & Zehner, 2013; Hart Research Associates, 2013, 2015; Lim, 2015).
Despite widespread adoption of writing across the curriculum/writing in the disciplines programs
at IHEs across the nation—which often incorporate professional and technical communication
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 40

curricula (Thaiss & Porter, 2010)—it appears that undergraduate students have not yet gained
writing skills for post-degree professional success.
A utopian perspective of higher education. Considering students’ knowledge and skills
strictly from a workforce readiness perspective delimits those skills to their utility value for the
labor market. The purpose of a college education, however, can be viewed through a more
utopian lens where the individual pursuit of learning is in service to its surrounding environment.
To be sure, while earning a college degree affords a certain degree of economic capital, it also
helps to reproduce social and cultural capital among graduates—capital essential to upholding
and promoting democratic values (Dewey, 1937; Bourdieu, 1986; Fine, 2001; Woolcock &
Narayan, 2000). That is, a college education is entirely necessary for individual and social
development (Steur, Jansen, & Hofman, 2012; Walters & Cooper, 2011).
A liberal education. Those committed to a liberal education are most aligned with the
utopian nature of postsecondary education. Cornwell and Stoddard (2006) assert, “the grounds
of a global epistemology is also the most basic argument for diversity in liberal education.”
While a postsecondary education for civic development historically excluded most citizens, a
liberal education in the 21
st
century is committed to training critical thinkers to be active
participants in society (Jenkins, Shresthova, Gamber-Thompson, Kligler-Vilenchik, &
Zimmerman, 2016; Pallas, 2011; Ramaley, 2013; Steur et al., 2012; Walters & Cooper, 2011;
Weissberg, 2011).
Citizens of the world. From a utopic perspective, a college education produces learned
citizens who craft what Dewey (1934) referred to as a “better-ordered society” (p. 87). In the
21
st
century, that better-ordered society is situated on a global scale. As Giroux (2011) asserts,
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 41

A globalized notion of citizenship extends that concept of the social contract
beyond the boundaries of the nation-state, invoking a broader notion of
democracy in which the global becomes the space for exercising civic courage,
social responsibility, politics, and compassion for the plight of others (p. 169).
If the purpose of college is to create high functioning citizens of the world, then students must
learn to critically reflect on their learning. More often than not, students will perform such
reflective practices through communicative acts. Rhetoric and composition scholars recognize
the roles that writing and writing instruction play in developing citizens of the world (Wan,
2011; Yancey, 2009). In short, writing skills are essential for employability and citizenry in the
21
st
century.
Employability and Citizenry in the 21
st
Century
A number of scholars have attempted to discern the knowledge and skills needed to
compete in the 21
st
century global market (Casner-Lotto & Barrington, 2006; Cope & Kalantzis,
2009; Eisner, 2010; Kalantzis et al., 2016; National Research Council, 2008; New London
Group, 1996; Newman & Winston, 2016; Selfe, 1999; World Economic Forum, 2015; Yancey,
2009). Common among them is the recognition that the skills valued in the 20
th
century are no
longer sufficient.
Technology. Studies show that shifts in technology and graduates’ abilities to adapt to
those shifts highly affects employability and active citizenry in the 21
st
century (Cope &
Kalantzis, 2009; Horner, Selfe, & Lockridge, 2014; New London Group, 1996; Yancey, 2009).
Such advancements influence the postsecondary writing curriculum (Yancey, 2009).
Specifically, in relation to first-year college students deemed underprepared to succeed in
English, Relles and Tierney (2013) find that students are also digitally underprepared. They
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 42

support a pluralistic approach to writing instruction – one that helps students gain the multiple
literacy skills needed for degree attainment. Selfe (1986, 1999) long has advocated for
recognition of the technological contexts in which students compose. In her more recent work
with Horner, she calls for a more expansive view of writing and writing education—one that
incorporates communicative practices in multiple modes and languages (Horner & Selfe, 2013).
Indeed, rapid advancements in technology, those that link individuals around the world, require
college graduates to have the skills to address yet-unknown problems and communicate complex
information across cultures (National Research Council, 2008). Jenkins (2016) explains that it is
through the use of technologies and networked communications that everyday youth work
toward collective interests and political change. In short, students must develop multiliteracies
to participate in labor and social markets.
Multiliteracies for today’s graduates. The New London Group (1996) coined the term
“multiliteracy” in their seminal article, A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures,
in which they argued that students must learn and adopt multiple literacy skills for the changing
environment of the 21
st
century. They advocated for a new approach to writing education, one in
which students learn to reach a variety of audiences through multiple modes, including written,
aural/oral, visual, spatial, gestural, and tactile methods of expression. More recently, Cope and
Kalantzis (2009) and Kalantzis, Cope, Chan, and Dalley-Trim (2016) continue to advance a
pedagogy of multiple literacies particularly in response to evolving technologies and with an eye
toward arming students with the critical skills needed to analyze the production of knowledge
and participate in meaning making within such rapidly changing contexts.
Professional and technical written communication skills. In addition to the ability to
communicate effectively in multiple modes, research indicates that 21
st
century graduates must
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 43

prove proficient in professional and technical documentation not only for the labor market but
also as a critical literacy skill. Wilson (2001) explains,
In a global economy where information increasingly is the product and employees
can expect to change careers 6 or 8 or 12 times over a lifetime, changing the way
students perceive their relationship to authority structures, technology, and
information itself is the greatest positive impact we can have on their lives” (p.
97).
Like the ability to make meaning using multiple literacies, students must develop abilities to
understand, challenge, and design professional and technical documents that function at a global
level.
Globalization. With an increase in global connectedness, today’s graduates must have
the ability to communicate across contexts and cultures (Hewins-Maroney & Williams, 2013).
Tierney (2004) defines globalization as “a social process where the nation-state as the unit of
economic, political, and cultural analysis becomes less important, or even irrelevant, and in its
place are borderless worldwide social relations.” In such a worldwide system of knowledge
production, graduates must adapt to complex social environments. Doing so involves
intercultural competencies, translingual communication, and rhetorical attunement.
Intercultural awareness. The growing internationalization of IHEs in the 21
st
century
commands that college students have the intercultural skills to communicate among and with
different groups (Horner & Trimbur, 2002; Leonard, 2014; Matsuda, 2006; Pratt, 2003). In
addition to the cultural awareness and knowledge students gain through an internationalization of
the higher education curriculum, a study by Deardorff (2006) suggests that intercultural
competencies foster comparative thinking skills and cognitive flexibility. Postsecondary
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curricula ought to involve some level of cultural competency, and the writing classroom is as
good as site as any to do so (Flammia, 2015; Li, 2008). In fact, since Kaplan’s (1966) research
on contrastive rhetoric, linguists, and by extension writing educators, have recognized the ways
in which rhetorical moves are always situated within cultural contexts. Such awareness helps
students not only to appreciate communicative patterns among different groups but also to take a
culturally sensitive approach to language use and meaning making.
Translingualism and rhetorical attunement. Current rhetoric and composition scholars
believe that communicative practices are shifting to a more translingual dynamic in which an
individual’s abilities to shuffle among languages is an asset to their participation in society
(Canagarajah, 2006; Horner et al., 2011; Leonard, 2014; Lu & Horner, 2012; Matsuda, 2006).
According to the American Community Survey (2015), 44% of Californians age five or older
speak a language other than English at home. Language difference, scholars advocate, should be
viewed as an asset rather than a deficit to student learning and development (Cliett, 2003; Horner
et al., 2011; Matsuda, 2006; National Council of Teachers of English, 2008; Smitherman, 1987,
1995; Wofford, 2014). In November 2016, 74% of California voters supported Proposition 58,
which repealed the 1998 proposition to limit language instruction in public schools to English
only (CA. Ed.G.E Initiative, 2017). Proposition 58, the California Education for a Global
Economy Initiative, “recognizes the importance of multilingual skills in the workplace at that
California employers across all sectors are actively recruiting multilingual employees; further
recognizes that multilingual skills are necessary for our country’s national security and essential
to conducting diplomacy and international programs” (CA. Ed.G.E Initiative, 2017). Surely,
teaching students to take a translingual approach to written communication in the 21
st
century
will help them become more adept at tuning into a given rhetorical situation with audience
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 45

needs/expectations and thus embody the type of cultural capital Bourdieu (1986) argues is
necessary for societal production and reproduction. Diverse language practices are always and
already inherent in one’s participation in democracy; Williams and Stroud (2015) refer to this as
linguistic citizenship in that language is the medium by which citizens perform—they use
language in a variety of ways to participate in the politics of everyday life.
In the afterword of Jenkins et al. (2016) By Any Media Necessary, Soep asks,
How can we use ‘any media necessary’ to help create conditions for deepening
inquiry among the communities we’re a part of? What kinds of learning
communities are we making when we engage with youth in participatory politics?
How are we helping to prepare those communities, when necessary, to remake
themselves?
At the localized site of CSS, this study sought to find answers to similar questions: what are the
knowledge, motivation, and organizational influences that help students understand and use
writing as a tool for deepening inquiry, engaging as citizens, and affecting change?
A Gap Analysis of Writing and Writing and Education
This literature review serves as an overview of cultural-historical developments in
college readiness in English, writing instruction, postsecondary education and 21
st
century
literacies. Understanding and internalizing the socially constructed nature of such concepts is
necessary to any research project that examines the connections among writing proficiency,
writing curriculum, postsecondary degree attainment, employability and active citizenry. While
those topics are broad in scope and extensive in scale, this study, prompted by a 40-year old
system-wide mandate and newly established initiative, sought to highlight their de facto
relationship at CSS.
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 46

In order to examine possible causes of writing deficiencies and address potential
solutions to achieving the institution’s 2025 Graduation Initiative goals, a gap analysis (Clark &
Estes, 2008) was utilized. Clark and Estes’ (2008) gap analysis framework is a systematic
methodology in which gaps in performance are analyzed in relation to what knowledge and
motivation is needed for the organization to meet its stated goals. Assumed causes for the
performance gaps are generated based on personal knowledge and related literature. The causes
are then validated by information collected from the literature review as well as survey
responses, focus group discussions, observations, document analysis, and pre-existing
institutional data.
Clark and Estes (2008) identify three causes of organizational performance gaps: the
stakeholders’ knowledge and skills, their motivation to achieve performance goals, and the
institutional barriers that keep stakeholders from achieving those goals. In order to meet
organizational objectives, those causes must be examined. Doing so helps to determine which
factors must be addressed so that goals can be met. This particular study investigated the
knowledge, motivation, and organizational barriers keeping all CSS students from developing
the writing proficiency levels expected of a college graduate and necessary for both
employability and active citizenry. A review of learning and motivational theory in relation to
students’ writing and writing education are introduced below, as is a review of organizational
influences pertinent to students’ degree attainment and post-degree success.
Knowledge, Motivation, and Organizational Influences on Writing Skills Attainment
By 2025, CSS intends to enhance student success by increasing both 4-year and 6-year
graduation rates and narrowing achievement gaps, specifically for underserved student groups
and Pell Grant Recipients. The CSU established these goals as part of the GI 2025. CSS
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 47

students are the primary stakeholders who benefit from the institution’s stated goals of increasing
graduation rates and eliminating achievement gaps. In order for the institution to attain those GI
2025 goals, CSS students must increase their upper-division writing proficiency levels. Students
across the curriculum should demonstrate growth in writing skills during Early Start English,
developmental, and GE first- and second-year writing coursework and apply those skills to their
work in upper-division courses; complete the Graduation Writing Requirement (GWAR) by the
end of their junior year; demonstrate career-ready written communication skills in senior project
or capstone courses; and earn their degrees on time.
Writing Knowledge and Skills
In order to accomplish the above performance goals, students need to gain declarative
knowledge about effective 21
st
century writing practices, procedural skills to apply that
knowledge in a variety of contexts, and metacognitive strategies to reflect and grow throughout
the process. This section examines literature focused on knowledge-related influences that are
pertinent to the achievement of the student stakeholder goal to increase upper-division writing
proficiency levels. Bok (2006) presents a number of studies that conclude that on the whole
students’ writing skills increase throughout their college careers by 19 percentile points. That is,
while college helps students somewhat improve their writing skills, IHEs have yet to do so
substantially (Bok, 2006). It seems appropriate then that CSS would set goals related to
developing student writing proficiency.
In an effort to understand better the knowledge students may need to improve their
writing skills, the literature analyzed in this section will be categorized by the following three
types of knowledge: declarative (factual and conceptual), procedural, and metacognitive
(Krathwohl, 2002; Rueda, 2011). According to McCutchen (2011), expert writers access
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 48

knowledge from their long-term working memories when composing; expert writers have “easy
access to: a) sections of previously written text in episodic text memory, and b) relevant
information from long-term memory, such as extensive vocabulary and nuanced knowledge of
genre, audience, etc.” in their long-term working memory (p. 62). That is, expert writers shift
from their short-term working memories of a given task to their long-term working memories of
writing as a whole to display their expert skills (McCutchen, 2011). Good writers must have
knowledge of multiple literacies and a range of writing strategies, must be fluent in how to
produce texts in a variety of different ways, and must reflect on the effects of their rhetorical
choices in order both to demonstrate advanced levels of writing proficiency and to continue to
improve their writing skills.
Declarative, procedural, and metacognitive knowledge types are relevant to increasing
upper-division writing proficiency levels. Declarative knowledge includes both factual and
conceptual information (Krathwohl, 2002). Factual knowledge includes literacies, such as
terminology and other specific skills that students must know in order to solve context-specific
problems (Krathwohl, 2002; Rueda, 2011). Conceptual knowledge is the knowledge of how
certain literacies interrelate and function together within a certain structure (Krathwohl, 2002).
The knowledge of context-specific techniques and methods as well as the understanding of when
to employ those methods appropriately is procedural knowledge (Krathwohl, 2002). In the
discipline of writing, students must grasp a range of rhetorical concepts to help them develop and
organize effective responses to communicative tasks.
In addition, students will need to be reflective enough to discern when the application of
those rhetorical strategies works or does not work. When students reflect, they employ
metacognitive skills. Metacognition is thinking about thinking (Baker, 2006; Krathwohl, 2002;
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 49

Rueda, 2011). In other words, metacognition is one’s awareness of how one is going about a
specific task. When students employ metacognitive strategies, learning improves; thus, it is
imperative that educators foster students’ metacognitive development at all levels and in a
variety of contexts (Baker, 2006). Students can engage in metacognitive practices through
interviews, questionnaires, or think alouds that invite them to reflect on their learning processes;
as well, students can engage in other modes of self-regulation and reflection as they complete
tasks (Baker, 2006; Bandura, 2005; Pekrun, 2011; Rueda, 2011). Metacognitive activities are
important for the writing classroom because they help writers better understand their writing
process and how to improve it (Fernsten & Reda, 2011; VanKooten, 2016). Declarative,
procedural, and metacognitive knowledge influences are important factors CSS must consider
when examining how to assist students in achieving improved writing proficiency.
Knowledge of multiple literacies. As students move through their college careers, they
must be able to discern what distinguishes a developing from a proficient writer. Given multiple
opportunities to do so from the first to their final years, students must gain the conceptual
knowledge necessary to demonstrate how their writing is advancing. According to Thaiss and
Zawacki (2006), three qualities distinguish effective academic writing: “disciplined and
persistent inquiry, control of sensation and emotion by reason, and an imagined reader who is
likewise rational and informed” (Thaiss & Zawacki, 2006, p. 8). While colleges attempt to
introduce academic writing to first-year students, the concepts seem to be presented in an
abstract manner, and writers struggle to understand how such literacies can be demonstrated in a
variety of contexts (Thaiss & Zawacki, 2006). Advanced writers present these qualities in
dynamic ways that are appropriate given the context of the communication (Thaiss & Zawacki,
2006). Harris (2006) explains that advanced writers move beyond oppositions and “bring a
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 50

cluster of texts and perspectives” to demonstrate their understanding of complex topics. Texts
by proficient writers are useful in that they invite readers to think “through the potential uses of a
number of positions rather than arguing for or against a fixed point of view” (Harris, 2006, p.
25). Exploring the complexities of a certain subject, then, is one strategy students can employ to
demonstrate their advanced writing proficiency. By and large, McCutchen (2011) suggests that
when writers have a sizable amount of writing experiences stored in their long-term memory,
such as how to persistently inquire about a topic, how to present that topic logically and with an
astute awareness of audience, and how to present arguments complexly by possibilizing a
number of solutions, they can access those strategies that help them to demonstrate advanced
writing proficiency in a variety of contexts.
In the 21
st
century, demonstration of one’s writing skills extends beyond words organized
effectively on paper. Communicators today employ digital technologies and multiple languages
to affect their audiences. The New London Group (1996) encouraged writing educators at the
turn of the century to consider how better to prepare students to succeed as the designers of our
social futures. To them, literacy integrated a broad range of modes and languages. This aligns
with David Perkins’ (2008) argument that student learning must extend beyond the possession
and performance of knowledge and into the realm of proactive production of knowledge and
meaning making. A curricular commitment to the development of students’ multiliteracy skills
and the transfer of that knowledge across contexts is essential to the design thinking of today’s
global market.
Knowledge of genre and discourse conventions. Robertson, Taczak, and Yancey
(2012) examines students’ own accounts of their writing and serves as a knowledge influence for
the purposes of this study in that their work explores the transfer of writing skills from high
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 51

school to the first-year composition classroom. While they conjecture that many students enter
college without prior knowledge upon which to draw to complete their writing tasks, the authors
explore how students take up new knowledge in relation to old knowledge: as assemblage, as re-
mix, and as a critical incident (Robertson, Taczak, & Yancey, 2012). This is procedural
knowledge – how to transfer writing strategies from one context to another. Wardle (2007) also
helps as a knowledge influence in that, like Robertson, Taczak, and Yancey (2012), Wardle’s
(2007) longitudinal study of seven students across their first two years of college examines the
issue of transfer in relation to the first-year composition classroom. Wardle (2007) argues that
because first-year composition remains a required course at almost every post-secondary
institution, the issue of transfer should be studied in relation to the question: do students transfer
the writing skills they gain in first-year composition to other college courses. She concludes that
“meta-awareness about writing, language, and rhetorical strategies in FYC may be the most
important ability” the course offers and that first-year composition courses should both help
students consider writing in different contexts and help them gain metacognitive strategies in
light of those contexts (Wardle, 2007, p. 82). There is no doubt that students’ procedural
knowledge of how to apply their writing knowledge across genres and contexts is an important
influence for students attempting to increase their levels of writing proficiency.
Audience awareness. The development of students’ metacognitive skills is also pertinent
to their growth as writers. Students not only need to learn how to draw from prior writing
knowledge and strategies (Yancey, Robertson, & Taczak, 2014), they also need to reflect on their
rhetorical choices, how those choices affect their intended audience, and how choices may or
may not transfer to other contexts. Research conducted by Hammann (2005) maintains that
metacognitive knowledge influences student writing. She examines the self-regulatory behaviors
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of college-level student writers, their self-knowledge, and concludes that instructors need to be
more aware of how students’ beliefs about writing and their self-regulatory behaviors influence
their writing practices and motivation to write well (Hammann, 2005). Like Hammann (2005),
Cabrejas-Peñuelas (2012) examines the writing strategies of 231 American students and
concludes that “expert writers favour the cognitive, metacognitive and compensation strategies”
in their writing (p. 77). Her study shows that students who employ a variety of metacognitive
strategies earn higher final grades in their writing courses (Cabrejas-Peñuelas, 2012). Similar to
Hammann (2005) and Cabrejas-Peñuelas (2012), the work of Khaki & Hessamy (2013) supports
self-knowledge as an influence on students’ writing skills. In particular, their work explores
metacognitive strategies of multilingual writers, a subgroup of the stakeholder group in this
study. Khaki and Hessamy (2013) studied the writing proficiencies of 202 non-native English
speakers by having them first complete a writing test and then complete a metacognitive
inventory to determine if students’ metacognitive strategies change depending on the writing
task. The authors conclude that multilingual writers did not use metacognitive strategies
effectively, and therefore teachers would do well in assisting students with the development of
such practices. Overall, research shows that metacognition has an impact on the success of
student writers.
Certainly, CSS students must possess declarative, procedural, and metacognitive
knowledge in order to advance their writing proficiency during college. Knowledge influences
achievement of the stakeholder goal to gain reflective practices that help identify writing
weaknesses, seek support to increase skills, and demonstrate advanced writing proficiency
(thereby completing the upper-division writing requirement) by the end of junior year so that
they may have the skills needed to succeed in their senior projects, graduate on time and, gain
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 53

employment post graduation. For the purposes of this study, Table 2 outlines three knowledge
influences related to developing one’s writing proficiency levels and how those influences were
assessed in this study.
Table 2

Knowledge Influences
Knowledge Influences Knowledge Type

Knowledge Influence Assessment
Students need knowledge of multiple
literacies to demonstrate upper-division
writing proficiency in general
education and major disciplines.
Declarative Students will be able to identify
effective linguistic and digital
technologies and apply them in a
variety of writing contexts.
Students need to know how/when to
incorporate writing strategies
appropriate for specific genres and
discourse communities.
Procedural Document analysis of student writing
will demonstrate effective rhetorical
choices based on the expectations of
the assignment; students will
categorize discipline-specific writing
conventions.
Students need the ability to reflect on
their rhetorical choices, how those
choices affect their intended audience,
and how choices may or may not
transfer to other contexts.
Metacognitive Students will submit a self-reflection
in addition to a writing assignment;
the reflection will require that
students discuss how the rhetorical
choices they incorporated were
appropriate for a particular audience.

Motivation to Attain Advanced Levels of Writing Proficiency
This section reviews literature that focuses on motivation-related influences pertinent to
the achievement of the CSS student stakeholder goal to increase upper-division writing
proficiency levels. According to Clark and Estes (2008), motivation has three processes: active
choice, persistence, and mental effort. Active choice is connected to actively working towards
meeting a goal; persistence is maintaining focus and continuing to pursue the goal; and mental
effort is the level of work necessary in order to reach goals (Rueda, 2011). While there are a
variety of theories of motivation, three relevant to this study are the expectancy value motivation
theory (Eccles, 2006), efficacy theory (Bandura, 2000, 2005), and goal orientation theory
(Yough & Anderman, 2006). Expectancy value theory explores both the expectations and values
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 54

individuals carry with them when deciding to begin or persist at completing certain tasks (Eccles,
2006). Specifically, this study examined the utility value component of expectancy value
motivation theory, which focuses upon how the usefulness of completing a task affects one’s
motivation to do so (Eccles, 2006). In addition to utility value, this study applied efficacy
theory, which examines the ways in which one’s sense of capability influences the decision to act
on, persist at, or expend mental effort to complete a task (Bandura, 2000). Finally, goal
orientation theory places one’s goal(s) at the core of motivation in that the goal(s) determine
whether or not one will choose to begin, persist at, or put mental effort into completing a task
(Yough & Anderman, 2006). To be sure, for the purposes of improving one’s writing skills,
motivation is particularly important because motivation to write well results from a “confluence
of relationships, ideologies, institutions, and activities with and in which the individual is
engaged” (Rodby, 1999, p. 48). While a number of motivational constructs may be linked to the
achievement of increasing one’s writing skills, this study focused specifically on utility value,
self-efficacy, and goal orientation.
Utility value. According to Eccles (2006), utility value, a component of the expectancy
value motivational theory, is “determined by how well a task fits into an individual’s goals”
(para. 10). That is, the value of a given task is determined by how well the completion of that
task will influence the achievement of an individual’s future goals (Wigfield & Cambria, 2010).
Indeed, students place value on tasks in which they have a personal interest (Schraw & Lehman,
2009; Wigfield & Cambria, 2010). Yet, as Schraw and Lehman (2009) indicate, instructors also
can cultivate the value students place on tasks by highlighting a task’s importance and generating
interest in it, i.e., increasing students’ situational interest. Research shows that high levels of
personal and/or situational interest relate to high levels of achievement (Pintrich, 2003; Schraw
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 55

& Lehman, 2009). While interest directly associates with the value students place in tasks,
students’ determination of value is also influenced by the costs associated with achieving a
particular goal or completing a particular task (Eccles, 2006). As Eccles (2006) notes, “schools
need to provide young people with genuine reasons for attaching higher subjective task value to
engaging in school work” despite the ways in which doing so may affect a student’s “loss of time
and energy for other activities” (para. 21).
Student awareness of the value of improving writing skills. Bok (2006) suggests that
students often place higher value on the subjects they view as practical to their careers. It would
seem, then, that according to utility value one way to motivate students to value writing skills is
to correlate those skills with the skills students will utilize in their professions. Bollig’s (2015)
research offers a utility value influence in terms of why writing skills are relevant for the
workforce. Bollig (2015) explores the debate about whether college is truly worth it and argues
that within that debate, writing instructors should make career readiness the focus of the
classroom. If higher education institutions want to make writing relevant to students and help
them see the value in gaining writing skills, Bollig (2015) advocates that instructors ought to
consider designing a curriculum that invites students to explore the ways in which workers write
and how rhetorical choices relate to workplaces. Rodby (1999) offers real-world evidence of
how students place value on writing skills as they are related to their careers. She offers the case
of a Latina student to highlight her point. She states,
Luciana’s belief that good grades in writing classes would ensure economic success after
graduation was part of her home life, part of her classmates’ beliefs, part of the
atmosphere at her work-study job at retention services, and part of the clubs such as
Latinx Leadership that she had belonged to in high school. (Rodby, 1999, p. 51)
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 56

Eccles (2006) and Wigfield and Cambria (2010) concur that a range of social systems
influence how one determines value of a given task. Despite the social construction that writing
is valuable only as a skill to increase one’s hire-ability, as Cooper (2011) points out, writing
skills are important not only for workforce development but also for productive citizenship.
Cooper (2011) wants students to be responsible communicators who believe that their words can
contribute to the formation of what Latour calls “a good common world” (as cited in Cooper,
2011, p. 443).
Boice (1994) studied how writers motivate themselves to complete tasks and concluded
that two reasons why writers lack motivation are their ambivalence and/or disaffection for
writing. Ambivalence appears to be the main reason writers put off tasks, and for Boice (1994)
ambivalence includes associating writing tasks as struggles and thus procrastinating to complete
them. Whereas ambivalence and disaffection are somewhat similar, for Boice (1994)
disaffection is a worse motivational issue because when writers are disaffected about writing,
they are basically cynical about writing as a whole. That is, they see no value in the task.
Further, when writers are disaffected, they often attribute their writing failures to external factors
(Boice, 1994). The effort required to improve one’s writing is perhaps much more than students
anticipate, especially because sustained writing practice occurs largely independent of an
instructor and fellow classmates, and if students have no personal interest in writing, then they
see little value in improving their writing skills. Furthermore, the cost of participating is high
because students have to put high levels of effort into improving their writing on their own
(Eccles, 2006). Indeed, the motivation to write is connected to the value students place in the act
of writing to achieve certain purposes. It was important, then, to explore in this study utility
value as a motivational influence associated with students’ attainment of improved writing skills.
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Self-efficacy. Just as exploring students’ utility value as a motivational influence is an
important component of this study, so, too, is it important to examine students’ levels of self-
efficacy as they relate to writing skills development. Efficacy is understood to be a key
influence of motivation (Bandura, 2000, 2005; Eccles, 2006; Mayer, 2011; Pajares, 2006).
Bandura (2005) defines self-efficacy as “a judgment of personal capability” (p. 26). Not to be
confused with self-esteem, one’s efficacy is developed through a variety of events, including
observing how others perform tasks, internalizing messages from one’s social environment(s),
and experiencing a range of emotional states (Pajares, 2006). In essence, efficacy influences
individuals’ motivation to reach both short-term and long-term goals (Bandura, 2000). As
Pintrich (2003) indicates, students who believe they can achieve their learning goals have self-
efficacy and are motivated to put in the effort and persist at the tasks required to achieve their
goals. It is important to note that individuals may overestimate their efficacy, or perhaps they do
not calibrate their efficacy based on context (Pajares, 2006; Pintrich, 2003). In those instances,
students perceive situations to be similar enough to other classroom experiences, and they
misjudge the level of persistence and effort required to succeed at a given task (Pintrich, 2003).
To be sure, the way students judge their capability to complete a writing task successfully, was
important to examine in terms of how students begin, persist, and put effort into completing the
task.
Student self-efficacy. Pajares’ (2003) literature review is seminal in the research of self-
efficacy and student writing. The author first offers background information about Bandura’s
social cognitive theory and self-efficacy. He then explains how self-efficacy beliefs related to
writing are typically assessed. Pajares (2003) goes on to synthesize the research on writing self-
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efficacy and concludes that because students’ emotions affect their writing skills improvement,
teachers should work to build students’ confidence.
Williams and Takaku (2011) build upon the work of Pajares (2003). The authors had 671
students, including international students, complete a self-efficacy belief scale over an 8-year
period, in addition to other writing tests, in an attempt to identify motivational issues related to
how students perceive their writing skills and whether those perceptions influence their choice to
seek help on their writing (Williams & Takaku, 2011). The results of their study indicate that
while other findings have shown that students with low self-efficacy may not seek help on their
writing, the multilingual students in their study with low levels of self-efficacy were more
inclined to seek help on their writing. In all, the study concludes that those who seek help on
their writing do improve their writing skills (Williams & Takaku, 2011). Whether writers see
themselves as capable or not, their awareness that they have the agency to seek assistance is an
important factor in their motivation to improve their skills.
Agency is related to self-efficacy in that when students have agency (or are aware of their
own agency) they act independently and make their own choices. Cooper’s (2011) work, in
addition to offering insight into the utility value of writing, serves as a self-efficacy motivation
influence in that it explores how students’ awareness of their own agency influences their
rhetorical acts and how those acts affect the world. Cooper (2011) astutely points out that
rhetorical acts may or may not be limited by certain social structures. That is, students may not
view themselves as having the ability or right to make their own choices. This plays out in the
composition classroom specifically with students whose home language is not closely aligns with
the standard, edited version of English expected in IHEs. It was important to examine agency in
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the writing classroom then, because agency can influence one’s concept of self-efficacy and play
a role in how that individual is motivated, or lacks motivation, to complete certain tasks.
Goal orientation. In goal orientation theory, the reasons behind students’ choices to
engage in certain academic tasks are examined (Yough & Anderman, 2006). That is, whereas
utility value examines students’ conception of the usefulness of completing a task and self-
efficacy examines students’ conception of their capability to complete a task, goal orientation
examines why students actively would choose to persist at a task. There are two types of goals
included in goal orientation theory: a mastery goal and a performance goal (Yough & Anderman,
2006). A mastery goal is what students set when they intend to master a certain task. A
performance goal is a goal students set when their performance is in comparison to that of their
peers (Yough & Anderman, 2006). These goals are further divided into approach and avoid
goals, both of which determine the reasons behind an individual’s goal. For example, a student
may set a mastery-oriented goal in an effort to master something or to avoid misunderstanding
(Yough & Anderman, 2006). Students of course set and carry multiple goals at one time
(Pintrich, 2003; Yough & Anderman, 2006). As Pintrich (2003) indicates, it is unclear what
types of goals better motivate students. Whatever the case, goals influence learning, and the
achievement of goals, or lack thereof, can affect a student’s emotions (Pekrun, 2011; Pintrich,
2003). Specifically, an instructor’s expectations for goal achievement can lead to negative
emotions, which may affect a student’s motivation to meet the goal (Pekrun, 2011). Critics of
goal orientation theory are particularly concerned with the negative effects on performance-
avoidance goals, but the influence of goals on motivation is evident throughout the research
despite their somewhat negative associations (Pekrun, 2011; Pintrich, 2003; Yough &
Anderman, 2006).
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Student orientation towards writing goals. Acquiring advanced levels of writing
proficiency is a long-term process. Zimmerman and Kitsantas (1999) explored the ways in
which students’ goals shifted as their levels of proficiency advanced. They conclude that
students succeed when they are guided first to set goals associated with their writing process;
when students have achieved a more automatic approach to writing, they succeed more when
they shift to outcome-related goals (Zimmerman & Kitsantas, 1999).
Process-related writing goals are those in which students and the instructor monitor how
the writer incorporates certain rhetorical elements into a text (Zimmerman & Kitsantas, 1999).
Process-related goals may be more associated with mastery, and thus in the case of improving
writing proficiency appear to be important. Bunn (2013) concurs that process-related goals are
important to the improvement of students’ writing proficiency. Specifically, Bunn’s (2013) work
relates to students’ goal orientation in that when they understand how improving one’s critical
reading skills can improve one’s writing skills, they will be motivated to improve their writing
via an increase in reading. Bunn (2013) suggests that because reading improves writing,
instructors ought to find ways to motivate students to read. That is, reading is an essential
process in improving writing skills.
While process-related goals may be key for developing writers, as Zimmerman and
Kitsantas (1999) indicate, outcome-related goals can be effective once a writer reaches
automaticity of writing strategies. The achievement of a certain grade is an example of an
outcome-related writing goal. As studies show, using grades to motivate students may result in
performance avoidance (Pekrun, 2011; Pintrich, 2003; Yough & Anderman, 2006). Developing
writers, in particular, may suffer from this goal type (Zimmerman & Kitsantas, 1999).
Nonetheless, grades are an extrinsic motivator. The grading contract strategy proposed by
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Danielewicz and Elbow (2009) serves as an alternative extrinsic motivation influence for
students. If students are less focused on how their performance affects their grades, the contract
may intrinsically motivate students to improve their writing skills (Danielewicz & Elbow, 2009).
In addition to shifting goal orientation from performance to mastery, grading contracts
also influence attributions associated with achieving goals “since fulfilling the contract is wholly
a matter of concrete activities over which [students] can keep control” (p. 255). Danielewicz and
Elbow (2009) argue for the incorporation of a grading contract in composition classrooms so that
students become more focused on writing and less focused on their grades. The authors argue
that these contracts in general shift power from the instructor to the students and that instructors
ought to incorporate contracts with “fuzzy criteria” related to student effort rather than particular
characteristics identifiable in a text (p. 251-252). Coupled with metacognitive activities that
invite students to reflect on what in the text reveals their effort, contracts with fuzzy criteria
focus more on learning and less on grading (Danielewicz & Elbow, 2009). In conclusion, the
authors recognize that contract grading does not solve all grading problems but does help both
instructors and students focus on improving writing skills. Because the focus of goal
achievement shifts from performance to mastery, students may be less inclined to avoid
completing writing tasks.
Table 3 displays assumed influences associated with student motivation to improve
writing skills and how those influences were assessed in this study.
Table 3

Motivation Influences
Motivation Influences

Motivation Influence Assessment

Utility Value: Students need to see value in
demonstrating advanced writing proficiency.
Written survey item: “It is important for me to
demonstrate my advanced writing skills.” (Not at
all important – Very important)
Self-Efficacy: Students need to believe they are Written survey items: “I feel confident about my
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capable of achieving advanced levels of writing
proficiency; students also need agency to seek support
when needed.
ability to achieve advanced levels of writing
proficiency.” (Strongly disagree – Strongly
agree); “I am comfortable seeking help on my
writing.” (Strongly disagree – Strongly agree)
Goal Orientation: Students should want to advance
their writing proficiencies.
Written survey item: “I want to continue learning
strategies to advance in my writing
proficiencies.” (Strongly disagree – Strongly
agree)

Organizational Influences on Student Writing and Writing Education
In addition to knowledge and motivation influences, Clark and Estes (2008) indicate that
organizational factors contribute to performance gaps. This section examines literature focused
on organizational influences pertinent to the achievement of the student stakeholder goal to
improve writing proficiency levels at CSS. While a number of organizational barriers may be
linked to the achievement of improved writing proficiency levels at IHEs, this study focused
specifically on the organizational culture of writing at CSS as well as its allocation of resources
towards writing and its relationship to failure and assistance-seeking.
General theory. Institutions must engage in the organizational learning necessary to
understand what barriers prevent stakeholders from achieving performance goals (Schwandt &
Marquardt, 2000). As Clark and Estes (2008) note, it is particularly important to understand the
cultural values of an organization; thus, for the purposes of this study, the cultural values
associated with writing and writing education on campus and the ways in which the institution
communicates those values must be explored. Certainly, those values have been influenced by
social and historical principles of writing (Lerner, 2009; Ritter, 2009; Soliday, 2002) and
language difference (Cliett, 2003; Horner et al., 2011; Matsuda, 2006; Smitherman, 1987, 1995).
In essence, as Schein (2004) puts it, the organization should undergo a cultural analysis and
examine the shared assumptions apparent in the ways in which values and goals are transferred
among members of the group.
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Composition scholars long have noted the tenuous relationship IHEs have with writing
education, evident particularly in the application of remedial practices and the lack of suitable
resources afforded to accommodate the needs of students with varied levels of proficiency
(Lerner, 2009; Villanueva, 2013). In the CSU in general, and CSS specifically, writing skills
seem to be an ongoing concern with mandates in place to address those concerns, but the ways in
which campuses approach those mandates have in effect been troublesome (Crouch & McNenny,
2000; Goen-Salter, 2008). While it is important to examine the campus culture in relation to
writing and writing education, labeling a culture as effective or ineffective depends not only on
the culture itself but also on the environment in which that culture operates (Schein, 2004).
An organizational environment is part and parcel made up of a number of individuals and
systems with varied beliefs, goals, and expectations, and the leadership plays a major role in the
imposition of an organization’s cultural values (Schein, 2004). Schein (2004) reminds us,
though, that leadership does not always and already create a culture; instead, members of a group
act in compliance with leadership, and the organizational culture develops over time (Kezar,
2001; Schein, 2004). Berger (2014) points out that leaders, supervisors, and the culture as a
whole play a fundamental role in how institutional values are represented.
Postsecondary institutions have a long history in the United States, and Kezar (2001)
asserts that while the values and goals of IHEs seem to change slowly over time, evidence shows
that colleges and universities actually change a lot on an ongoing basis. According to Schwandt
& Marquardt (2000), as a result of ongoing transitions, organizations carry “multiple memories”
that influence the culture. When examining the culture, then, it is important to be aware of the
multiple, perhaps competing, memories and how those memories may be affecting the
achievement of performance goals (Schwandt & Marquardt, 2000). In the case of writing at
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postsecondary institutions, campuses indeed carry multiple memories—memories of a time when
good writing meant error-free writing; when writing skills developed in first-year composition
classes; when writing education existed only in service to other, more important disciplinary
knowledge; and when the demonstration of writing proficiency was a box to check rather than a
valuable tool with which to engage in economic and social markets. Such memories influence
the cultural values inherent in an organization and affect the ways in which leaders negotiate and
manage change associated with those values.
Stakeholder-specific influences. The general theory behind organizational change
affords a valuable lens through which to examine stakeholder-specific influences related to the
problems of writing proficiency levels, college readiness, and graduate employability at CSS. In
order to understand how to assist CSS students in meeting the institution’s performance goals,
one must first understand the current state of the culture of writing on campus, how resources are
allocated to support that culture, and how the institution fosters a general culture with beliefs and
behaviors that differ from those that scholars deem best for writing and writing education.
The organizational culture of writing at CSS. As Kezar (2001) points out, understanding
the cultural model of an institution is a key component of effectively implementing change. CSS
is a polytechnic campus with a large focus on STEM majors. In fact, its vision for 2022 specifies
that the institution will eliminate achievement gaps for under-represented minorities, with a
special emphasis on those students earning STEM degrees. Writing, then, is not at the forefront
on a campus that places a high level of importance on science, technology, engineering, and
math. The upper-division writing requirement, for example, is understood to be a box to check
rather than a valuable opportunity to improve and demonstrate one’s writing skills. On a campus
that operates largely from a utilitarian perspective of the purpose of a college education, writing
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is not viewed as a valuable means to employability. In essence, as a polytechnic campus with an
emphasis on STEM disciplines, STEM skills define CSS’ identity (Schein, 2004). Put another
way, among CSS group members there exists certain beliefs about who CSS is and what it
represents, and writing across the disciplines does not play a significant role in that identity
despite the CSU’s writing mandates. In short, a culture of writing is not deeply embedded in the
school’s identity. Given the mandates with which the campus must comply and given its
emphasis on STEM majors, CSS has what Greenwood and Hinings (1996) refer to as
competitive commitments.
Leadership plays an important role in negotiating competitive commitments on campus
(Berger, 2014; Schwandt & Marquardt, 2000), and there is no central leadership role in place for
writing across the curriculum. Writing at CSS has several homes: the English Department
oversees first-year composition courses, the Writing and Rhetoric Center monitors student
compliance of CSU writing mandates, and writing-intensive courses are part of the General
Education (GE) program and are thus managed by the Academic Senate. The senate, however,
does not have a leader identified to oversee the writing instruction that takes place in those
courses. Based on the results of the most recent GE program review, some writing-intensive
instructors do not embed writing into the courses, and some courses are large lecture with too
high an enrollment capacity to allow for meaningful writing instruction to occur. Of course, the
Academic Senate has guidelines for writing-intensive GE courses that follow best practices, but
there is no leader monitoring and evaluating instructors’ adherence to those guidelines on a
regular basis. As well, departments outside English do not have a writing expert to support
writing education across the disciplines. Berger (2014) states, “Supervisors are the front lines for
employee trust, engagement, development, retention, and empowerment” (p. 12). In the case of
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CSS, then, without a designated leader to support instructors who teach writing-intensive courses
outside of the English Department, instructors across campus may not engage with and develop
their writing instruction. If not one leader, then, as Berger (2014) suggests, CSS should aim
towards developing a team of leaders on campus committed to strengthening writing instruction
in all disciplines and empowered to build upon the structure currently in place.
While CSS’ GE program experienced transformational change in the beginning part of
the 21
st
century with the move to writing-intensive courses established as part of the GE
curriculum, the change was, as Burke (2002) describes it, discontinuous because ongoing
developments of the program ceased beyond initial implementation
4
. Agócs (1997) points out
that there are a variety of ways in which organizations resist change, and one includes co-
optation—the appointment of a committee who is responsible for implementing change without
the power or resources to follow through with the responsibility. Such is the case with writing
education at CSS. While the campus in theory made a commitment to enhancing the culture of
writing on campus through the addition of writing-intensive GE courses, in practice CSS has
repressed that change because it has not followed through on maintaining empowered leadership
and developing the resources needed to support the writing program.
CSS’ allocation of resources for writing. Clark and Estes (2008) emphasize that the
allocation of resources influences the achievement of goals. Kezar (2001) agrees: IHEs are
dependent upon resources to thrive, and thus any attempt to address performance gaps must
examine how resources are distributed. In the case of supporting writing and writing instruction
on campus, resources include professional development for instructors to build an understanding
of teaching and responding to writing in the disciplines, the capacity to offer smaller class sizes,

4
The institution’s GE curriculum was under review at the time of this study, and revisions are
expected to include ongoing accountability measures to ensure growth and development in line
with ever-changing practices in general education and university learning objectives.
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and funding to hire more writing experts who can enhance the writing culture by offering
additional writing courses and growing support programs for both instructors and students. As
Perrow (1972) states, it is the leader who decides how resources will be allocated. To be sure,
CSS has a structure in place to determine the ways in which writing and writing education are
supported on campus. That is, there are leaders who make funding decisions, but those leaders
are tasked with accounting for a number of competing programmatic commitments instead of
focusing solely on writing education. In sum, scholars believe that it is essential to examine how
support is structured within the organizational environment (Marsh & Farrell, 2015; McGee and
Johnson, 2015). Doing so at CSS may help identify barriers to the stakeholders’ achievement of
the institution’s performance goals.
CSS’ relationship with failure. In addition to studying writing culture and how the
allocation of resources reflects upon the value the institution places on that culture, this study
will examine an added component of the CSS culture: that of its relationship to failure. CSS’
signature pedagogy is Learn by Doing, but a culture of failure is not cultivated in the classroom.
To be fair, while some instructors welcome a trial and error approach to constructing new
knowledge together with their students, students share the belief that failure is undesirable and
compete instead for the highest grade point averages in their classes. It is important to note that
the CSS campus is made up of high-achieving students. The average SAT score of a CSS
admitted first-time, first-year student was 1251, and the average high school grade point average
was 3.92 (CSUMentor, 2016). For the 2016-2017 academic year, CSS had a total of 58, 429
applicants and accepted 4,341 freshmen—a little over a 7% acceptance rate (CSS, 2017). Given
that, it is safe to assume that CSS admits students for whom failure is not an option. Because of
the highly competitive nature of the students on campus, students who identify their writing
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weaknesses and seek support to improve their skills may either be viewed as or feel like
imposters on campus. Writing instructors encourage students to recognize weaknesses, seek
support, and try out new writing strategies. With the fear of failure close at hand, however,
students may avoid such important practices.
In an effort to meet performance goals, students on campus must be invited to adopt new
mental models about failure and learning, models that go beyond what they may have inherited
throughout their twelve or more years of education (Kezar, 2001). Those models may have been
adopted domestically or internationally, and the institution must account for the varied
educational backgrounds of its student population, which likely influence the campus culture as a
whole. The student culture at CSS is generally risk averse, which may be part of the U.S.
learning model, and specifically, when students learn to write, they are led to believe that errors
are bad. As Connors (1985) points out, high expectations of mechanical correctness of the
English language can be traced back to the mid-19
th
century when class distinctions were
connected with linguistic distinctions and the American educational system sought to establish
correct language use not only as socially but also formally expected. Traditionally, student
writing was graded based on its sentence-level errors. Indeed, in some departments at CSS,
students still fail a writing assignment if the assignment is submitted with more than three
sentence-level errors. How might students be encouraged to take risks and develop as writers if
the environment does not support that behavior? As Kezar (2001) asserts, members of an
organization need to feel safe to take risks, and the organizational environment must cultivate
that culture. Because of both the campus identity and the identity of U.S.-based education
systems in general, establishing such an environment calls for a paradigm shift (Kezar, 2001).
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 69

Table 4 displays assumed organizational influencers associated with student achievement
of improved writing proficiency levels and how those influences were assessed in this study.
Table 4

Organizational Influences

If CSS wants to eliminate achievement gaps and decrease its time to graduation, then
students must demonstrate improved writing proficiency at the upper-division level. Not only
will improved writing proficiencies help to eliminate the achievement gap and lessen time to
graduation, but specifically, writing to learn activities throughout a students’ higher education
career invites students to think through ideas and concepts relative to becoming a responsible
Organizational Influences

Organizational Influence Assessment
Cultural Model Influence 1—A culture of
writing is not embedded into the school’s
identity; the upper-division writing requirement
is a box to check rather than a valuable
opportunity to improve and demonstrate one’s
writing skills.
Review course syllabi to determine where, when, and
how writing is built into courses across campus at the
lower and upper divisions, specifically GE Areas A1,
A3, C4, and D5, as well as program-specific senior-
level writing courses; examine resource allocations
related to writing and writing education; ask survey
and focus group questions about students’
experiences with writing on campus and the value
their perception of the value the university places on
developing writing skills.
Cultural Model Influence 2—Traditionally,
writing instructors expected error-free prose; a
culture of failure is not cultivated in the
classroom; identifying and making visible
one’s writing weaknesses may go against
students’ belief that error is bad.
Ask survey and focus group questions about
students’ experiences with writing assessment,
especially instructors’ feedback on error; ask survey
and focus group questions about students’ beliefs
about failure in the classroom.
Cultural Setting Influence 1—On a campus
with high-achieving students, seeking support
to improve writing skills may cause students to
experience imposter syndrome.
Ask survey and focus group questions about
students’ understanding of writing as an individual
process rather than one in which others may help;
ask survey and focus group questions about where
students might seek help on their writing and their
level of comfort when doing so.
Cultural Setting Influence 2—Self-reflective
practices are not built into the campus culture;
reflection on the effectiveness of one’s
rhetorical choices has not been built into
curricular activities.
Ask survey and focus group questions about
students’ awareness of metacognition as a learning
tool; ask survey and focus group questions about the
settings in which students are invited to reflect on
their writing projects.
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citizen of the world (Cooper, 2011; Nussbaum, 2010). Students must gain multiple literacies and
rhetorical strategies in addition to reflective writing practices from the first to the final year on
campus across their course content. Furthermore, they must be motivated to do so. The more
transparent educators are with the value inherent in increasing writing proficiencies, perhaps the
more value students will ascribe to writing skills and the more goals they will set to master those
skills.
Finally, students need to believe they are capable of achieving advanced levels of writing
proficiency, and to do so not only for themselves or the good of the university, but for the good
of the world. Adler-Kassner (2014) offers a qualitative examination of “the tension between
liberal education and professional training” (p. 453) and argues that writing skills are always
situated within certain contexts. Similarly, as the research of Chambliss and Takacs (2014)
shows, students’ writing skills improve after their first year of college largely because of the
context in which first-year students are operating: one which they want to fit into their new
environment. In order to help writers improve from the first to the final year, then, colleges must
consider how the culture of writing on campus as a whole affects students’ knowledge and
motivation to increase their writing proficiency.
The Intersection of Writing Skills, Motivation to Learn, and Organizational Context
This study evaluated the ways in which CSS’ writing curriculum supports both system-
wide and campus-specific performance goals related to college readiness, the achievement gap,
time to degree, and graduate employability. Since as Schwandt (1993) succinctly notes,
“atheoretical research is impossible” (as cited in Merriam & Tisdell, 2016), the research
presented here is grounded by a conceptual framework. A conceptual framework is a system of
concepts and existing theories that provide an underlying structure of support for one’s research
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(Maxwell, 2013; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Theories of social construction and pragmatism
grounded the conceptual framework of this study, which also was guided by the field of rhetoric
and composition. While there are a number of other theories and concepts related to college
readiness in English, writing skills, the achievement gap, time to degree, graduate employability,
and active citizenry, the investigator of this research project examined those issues through a
constructivist’s understanding of the co-creation of knowledge within economic, political, and
socio-cultural contexts and an experientialist’s commitment to empowering students to become
active agents of their education and contribute to a democratic society. As well, rhetoric and
composition scholarship offered a vital perspective on how students’ knowledge of writing and
rhetoric and their motivation to improve their proficiency levels impacts not only the institution’s
established goals for student success but also the critical literacy of the general populace
(Gilyard, 2008).
Each of the 23 campuses within the CSU has established graduation goals for 2025. In
the case of CSS, the campus intends to increase the four-year graduation rates to 71% by 2025 in
accordance with California Assembly Bill 1602, which allocates funding to the CSU in an effort
to “increase the four-year graduation rate for freshman students and two-year graduation rate for
transfer students above the graduation rate of students at other postsecondary institutions; and
increase the four-year and two-year graduation rates of low-income, students from
underrepresented minority groups, and first generation college students” (CA. Legis. Assemb.,
2016). With system-wide mandates in place to ensure that a) students are college ready in
English and b) students earn their degrees with the level of writing proficiency expected of
college graduates, it is clear that students’ writing skills directly influence the organization’s
graduation goals. To be sure, there are a variety of factors that influence the ways in which the
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stakeholder of this study, the students at CSS, meet their goal of earning an undergraduate
degree, and those factors are directly and indirectly tied to the institution’s intended goal of
increasing the 4-year graduation rate of its students. Nevertheless, a close evaluation of the ways
in which writing and writing education play a role in time to graduation was important to
conduct.
The conceptual framework below (Figure A) offers a visual depiction of the ways in
which campus culture influences stakeholders’ knowledge of effective writing strategies and
motivation to improve writing skills. The influences impact CSS students’ demonstration of
advanced levels of writing proficiency for degree attainment as well as their post-degree
employability and civic engagement. Writing, revising, reflecting, learning, and transferring that
learning are key to sustained writing practice—they are the procedural skills in which students
should engage throughout their time in college in order to advance their knowledge of multiple
literacies, genre, and discourse conventions as well as their awareness of audience. As a whole,
the development of these proficiencies and practices combine to form in students a critical
literacy skillset. The optimal point of achievement occurs in the space where students’
knowledge and motivation positively intersect with the campus culture of writing thereby
resulting in the critical literacy needed for degree attainment, employability, and active citizenry.
Such outcomes cannot be achieved, however, unless the cycle of sustained writing, reflecting,
learning, and transferring of learning occurs interminably.
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Figure A. Writing Skills for Degree Attainment, Employability, and Active Citizenry
In this study, knowledge of multiple literacies and context-appropriate rhetorical
strategies as well as the motivation to improve one’s writing for academic, professional, and
civic purposes were considered in accordance with best practices in the field of rhetoric and
composition. Specifically, the belief that writing is a social act “shaped and used in particular
communities” guided this research (Bizzell, 1982, p. 66). The norms and expectations created
within distinct discourse communities determine literacy practices, and economic, political, and
social contexts affect those practices (Anson, 2000; Bizzell, 1982). The social and political
components of composition that account for power and context align with the overarching theory
that framed this research: critical literacy. As such, this study examined the culture of writing on
the CSS campus to determine how best the curriculum is preparing students to transfer critical
literacy skills to their everyday lives and motivating them to connect the individualized power of
language with social action beyond their time at the university and into workforce and civic
realms.
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CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY
In this study, CSS students’ writing proficiency levels were examined in relation to
achievement, degree attainment, and post-degree employability and engagement. Chapter Three
presents the research design of the study as well as the methods for data collection and analysis.
This research attempted to address the following questions: to what extent does CSS’ writing
curriculum help students meet CSU upper-division proficiency standards; to what extent do CSS
students’ writing proficiency levels influence the achievement gap and/or play a role in students’
time to graduation; and what are the knowledge, motivation, and organizational influences
related to improving students’ levels of writing proficiency and preparing them for workforce
and civic responsibilities? The remainder of this chapter provides a detailed description of the
stakeholder group as well as the instrumentation and methods for data collection.
Study Site and Participating Stakeholders
This study was conducted at CSS, a predominately undergraduate, four-year institution of
higher education located in the state of California with an undergraduate population of 21,306
students when the study was conducted
5
(Institutional Research, 2016a). Of those, there were
11,247 males and 10,059 females. Underrepresented minorities made up 19.5% of the total
undergraduate population, and roughly 16% of students have low socioeconomic status, as
defined by the university through Pell Grant eligibility (Institutional Research, 2016a). In 2016,
the ethnic makeup of undergraduate students at CSS was as follows: White/Caucasian students
represented 56.4% of the undergraduate population, Asian Americans made up 12.6%,
Hispanic/Latinx students represented 16%, and .07% of the undergraduate student population
was African American (Institutional Research, 2016a).

5
Because writing programs at each of the 23 campuses within the CSU are locally designed, this
study site is not representative of systemwide practices.
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Admission into CSS is competitive; thus, students who attend the institution tend to be
high achievers that likely performed at the top of their high school classes. According to
admissions data for 2016, CSS admitted 29.5% of the 58,429 first-time freshman applicants, and
of those admitted, 4,341 matriculated (Institutional Research, 2016b). New first-time, first-year
admits had an average G.P.A of 3.92, an average SAT Reading score of 610, and an ACT
composite score of 28.4 (Institutional Research, 2016b) during the time of this study. Of the
4,341 first-time, first-year students at CSS in fall of 2016, 1.0%, or a total of 44 students were
identified as not proficient in English and required to complete the university’s remediation
milestone, none who identified as international students (California State University, 2017).
The undergraduate student population as a whole served as the primary stakeholder for
this study, with particular focus on subsets of the population including underrepresented
minorities and those with low socioeconomic status. The experience of undergraduate CSS
students in general, and those representing particular subgroups, was key in evaluating the CSS
writing program and its effects on undergraduates’ completion of the Graduation Writing
Assessment Requirement (GWAR), time to graduation, post-degree employability and
engagement.
Invitations to participate in the study were generated via course rosters and an ad hoc data
report. Specifically, for the ad hoc data report, the sample set was distributed into subgroups
based on the following categories: gender, underrepresented minority, Pell Grant, first
generation, those who completed first-year composition for multilingual students, and
underprepared students. Disaggregating data sets into those subgroups assisted in more
specifically identifying performance gaps among distinct populations. Invitations to participate
in surveys were not crosschecked, but the survey was set to limit a response to one time per
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email address in an effort to avoid an overlap in survey responses. The ad hoc data report did
account for duplicate student identification numbers so student data was unique.
Data instrumentation and collection from particular stakeholder subgroups in relation to
assumed knowledge, motivation, and organizational influences are outlined in the section below.
Data Instrumentation and Collection
In order to determine the extent to which CSS helps students achieve expected levels of
writing proficiency, the collection and instrumentation methods for this study consisted of a
survey, interview and focus group discussion sessions, and classroom observations, as well as
document and institutional data analysis. As a means of data collection, Clark and Estes (2008)
validate conducting surveys, interviews, and focus group sessions as effective methods for
identifying gaps in knowledge, motivation, and organizational performance. Since the Clark and
Estes (2008) gap analysis frames this study, it was important that survey, interview, and focus
group questions were clearly categorized by the knowledge, motivation, and organizational
influences of writing and writing education on campus; yet, while those methods of data were
valuable because they assisted in identifying those influences, they did not “prematurely suggest
causes” for performance gaps (Clark & Estes, 2008, p. 45). Furthermore, classroom observations
assisted in triangulating data collected from the survey, interviews, and focus groups and also
served to provide specific, real-world incidents in which writing takes place in the classroom
(Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Document analysis also triangulates data and is considered to be a
major source of data collection for qualitative research, particularly because more often than not,
the documents analyzed are produced outside of the confines of a particular study (Merriam &
Tisdell, 2016). In the case of this study, writing assignments, course syllabi, and major degree
requirements were examined to determine students’ expected levels of exposure to writing across
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the curriculum and in their disciplines. Finally, an institutional data report was valuable in
triangulation with other data because the report helped to reveal trends in student GWAR
performance correlative to college readiness in English and other factors. As a whole, it was the
aim of this study to produce credible results that provide the organization with appropriate
recommendations for improving writing and writing education at CSS.
The principal investigator conducted each method of evaluation in this study. First, the
researcher sent out via email an online student survey. The survey was sent during the middle of
the fall term. After preliminary analysis of survey results, the researcher hosted student
interviews and focus groups. As well, during the fall term the researcher observed classroom
sessions and concluded data collection with document and institutional data analysis. Methods
for data collection were carefully planned and executed as follows.
Survey
In order to understand better how students’ writing experiences on campus help or hinder
their ability to meet CSU upper-division writing proficiency standards, students at the lower- and
upper-division were invited to complete an online survey via SurveyMonkey. The survey
created for this research project built upon a 2009 campus writing survey, with additional
questions designed to hone in on knowledge, motivation, and organizational influences that may
play a role in student achievement of advanced writing proficiency levels. The survey included
20 matrix questions with a series of Likert-scale questions about students’ writing experiences at
CSS.
At the outset of the data collection process, a survey link was sent via email to the
following targeted populations: students enrolled in lower-division General Education (GE)
writing courses, students enrolled in upper-division GE writing-intensive courses, students who
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had been required to complete development writing courses, and international students. This
data collection instrument employed a convenience sampling method in that student information
from course rosters and via the International Center was easily attainable and conveniently
presented lists of potential participants. While scholars indicate that a nonprobability sample is
desirable in most quantitative studies (Creswell, 2014; Maxwell, 2013), a convenience sample in
this case was effective because it reached the target population (Fink, 2013): currently enrolled
undergraduate students at CSS. This method assured that a range of students from all class
levels had an opportunity to participate in the study since a majority of undergraduate students
are enrolled in at least one lower- or upper-division GE writing-intensive course each term and
other significant but often silenced voices, such as those required to complete developmental
writing coursework and those with backgrounds and experiences outside of the United States.
Survey responses were anonymous, but participants were invited to provide their email address if
they wanted to be interviewed or engage in a follow-up focus group discussion. The responses
were tracked via separate links based on the specific sampling criterion defined below in order to
help determine if gaps in knowledge or motivation occur more so during a particular class level
or for a particular student subgroup.
Survey sampling criterion 1. Undergraduate students required to fulfill the CSU
remediation mandate based on English Placement Tests scores were sampled
6
. The 136 students
enrolled in the first-year developmental writing course during Fall 2014, 2015, and 2016 were
invited to complete the online survey. (Note: students enrolled in the first-year developmental
writing course during Fall 2017 were not invited to compete the survey since their experience

6
Because this research project commenced before Executive Order No. 1110 (2017), which
implemented a multiple measures placement mechanism and theoretically ended remediation on
CSU campuses, data collected for this study still considered English Placement Test scores as an
indicator of students’ readiness levels.
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with writing on campus was limited to seven weeks.) This student population was targeted for
sampling to help track their experiences with the writing curriculum in case knowledge,
motivation, and organizational barriers could be identified through their responses. It was
important to stratify participation in this way in the event that responses from this population
elicited information about how college readiness affected student perceptions about their writing
skills and education beyond the first year.
Survey sampling criterion 2. The survey also elicited responses from undergraduate
students enrolled in the following lower-division writing courses: English 145, English 148, and
English 149. While survey responses from this group did not include students enrolled in first-
year composition courses (English 133: Writing & Rhetoric for Multilingual Students and
English 134: Writing & Rhetoric) since students enrolled in those courses would only be able to
draw on seven weeks of on-campus experiences in response to the survey questions, students
enrolled in English 145, 148, and 149 also represent students’ lower-division writing experiences
from a variety of perspectives: those enrolled in the traditional argumentation course as well as
those enrolled in specialized writing courses for professional and technical disciplines. An email
about the study that included a link to the survey was sent to the 1,337 students enrolled in GE
Area A3 courses. Responses from students in this group helped identify gaps in knowledge and
motivation as well as organizational barriers they experience in writing classes during their first
two years on campus, the years during which students typically complete these courses.
Survey sampling criterion 3. Undergraduate students enrolled in upper-division General
Education (GE) writing-intensive Area C1, C2, C4, and D5 courses also were invited to
complete the survey. Using course rosters, the researcher sent an email about the study with a
link to the survey to the 778 students enrolled in GE C1 courses and the 964 students enrolled in
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GE C2 courses. As well, an email was sent to the 39 instructors teaching the 61 sections of the
GE Area C4 courses in this category requesting that they forward the email to their students.
The same email also was sent to the 34 instructors teaching the 50 sections of GE Area D5
courses. The message to instructors included an email to students with a description of the study
and the survey link.
Survey sampling criterion 4. The 316 international students currently enrolled in classes
at CSS were also invited to complete the survey. This subgroup of the student population,
representing 62 countries, offered an essential perspective about the university’s support for
those with multilingual backgrounds. All currently enrolled international students received an
email with a description about the study and a link to the survey.
Survey protocol. Students included in the above sampling criterion were sent an email
that explained the purpose of the study, included a section with Informed Consent details, and
provided a link to the survey. In addition to nominal questions, the survey consisted of questions
using ordinal, interval, and ratio scales. In an effort to ensure the validity and reliability of the
survey items, an initial draft of the survey was sent to the writing director and another writing
studies expert who provided member checks, which qualitative research experts suggest assist in
confirming both the content and internal validity of the questions (Maxwell, 2013; Merriam &
Tisdell, 2016). As well, respondent validation, according to Merriam and Tisdell (2016), helps
to confirm a study’s validity. As such, the survey also was sent to a selection of undergraduate
students who serve on staff in the CSS Writing and Rhetoric Center for feedback. See Appendix
A for the survey recruitment letter and Appendix B for survey items.
Interviews and Focus Groups
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A total of three interviews and two focus group discussion sessions were conducted
during fall term after survey responses had been preliminarily analyzed and general theories had
begun to take shape. The researcher did not request specific demographic information from
interview and focus group participants, but it was clear from self-identifying information that
partakers in the sessions represented the following subgroups of the student population:
underserved students, multilingual students, and college-ready students. Interviews were
conducted on a one-to-one basis, and based on best practices, the researcher intended to conduct
focus group sessions that consisted of four to eight students from the representative populations
(Krueger & Casey, 2009; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Student participation was difficult to
garner, however; therefore, focus groups consisted of one two-person session and another three-
person session.
Engaging in conversation with members of the student populations as defined below
helped provide more description for how students experience CSS’ writing curriculum as well as
any knowledge, motivation, and/or organizational barriers they may encounter during their time
on campus. Overall, interview and focus group discussions offered the researcher descriptive
responses that provided deeper insights to research questions one and three; the questions asked
during both interviews and focus group sessions aimed to elicit information about students’
experiences with the writing curriculum and how those experiences help or hinder their academic
and post-degree success. Interview and focus group participants represented the following
criterion.
Interviews and focus groups sampling criterion 1. Those who completed the survey
self-selected to engage in a follow-up discussion in order to gain a deeper understanding of their
experiences in relation to theories that would be cursorily developed based on survey responses
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(Maxwell, 2013). Upon completion of the survey, students were invited to add their contact
information if they were interested in engaging in an interview or focus group. Participant
sampling therefore was convenient and pizza was served during interview and focus group
sessions to incentivize student participation.
Interviews and focus groups sampling criterion 2. International students enrolled in
classes at CSS during the term the study was conducted were invited to participate in an
interview or focus group discussion. These students were identified using a convenience sample
in that the discussion session invitation email was sent to the international student listserv with
notice that pizza would be served during discussion sessions to incentivize student participation.
Interviews and focus groups sampling criterion 3. Undergraduate CSS students
enrolled in the one section of English 133: Writing and Rhetoric for Multilingual Speakers were
invited to attend an interview or focus groups session. This group of students was conveniently
sampled since there was only one section of the course offered during the term during which the
study took place. The researcher asked the instructor of the course to send an invitation to
students via email and asked them to RSVP if they wanted to be interviewed or attend a focus
group session. The invitation email stated that pizza would be served to incentivize student
participation
Interviews and focus groups protocol. Interviews and focus group sessions occurred in
a private faculty office on campus. Participants received informed consent sheets at the
beginning of the session, and discussions followed a semi-structured protocol in that a script
initially guided discussion, but the structure of the session was flexible based on participants’
comments. Open-ended questions encouraged conversation among the participants, and initial
questions helped participants establish trust and generate engagement with the topic, as Krueger
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and Casey (2009) suggest. The key questions for interview and focus group sessions were
created based on knowledge gained from survey responses and were asked mid-way through the
session (Krueger & Casey, 2009). Interviews and focus group sessions were recorded using the
voice memo function on an Apple iPhone and then uploaded to Rev.com for transcription. See
Appendix C for the interview and focus group recruitment letter and Appendix D for the
interview and focus group Informed Consent/Information Sheet, and Appendix E for interview
and focus group questions.
Observations
For the purposes of addressing to what extent CSS’ current writing curriculum helps
students meet CSU proficiency standards, the researcher observed four sections of undergraduate
lower-division writing courses and four sections of upper-division writing-intensive courses.
Doing so allowed observation in the exact setting in which writing instruction occurs and offered
a “firsthand encounter” with CSS’ writing curriculum (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016, p. 137); for,
lower- and upper-division writing-intensive courses are those in which students’ levels of writing
proficiency are expected to improve. Observations of these classes specifically helped to answer
to what extent CSS’ writing curriculum helps students to meet CSU proficiency standards and
what knowledge, motivation, and organizational influences relate to improving students’ levels
of writing proficiency, narrowing the achievement gap, increasing students’ time to graduation,
and preparing them for workforce and civic responsibilities.
In order to gain access to these writing-intensive classes, the researcher pursued approval
from CSS’ IRB and then sent out an invitation to specific instructors teaching GE
Communication Area A1 and A3 courses, GE Arts and Humanities Area C4, and GE Society and
the Individual Area D5 writing-intensive courses during the fall term. All solicited instructors
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agreed to allow an observation of their class and were asked to seek verbal consent from their
students after sharing with them the informed consent sheet prior to any scheduled observation.
The following criterion determined courses for observation.
Observations sampling criterion 1. Two sections each of GE Communication Area A1
and A3 writing courses at CSS were selected for observations using a convenience sampling
procedure. GE Communication Area A1 is the first-year composition course required by all
students, except those who have earned AP credit for the course. Each section of this course
consists of an enrollment capacity of 22 students. GE Communication Area A3, English 145:
Reasoning, Argumentation, and Writing, is the second required lower-division writing course
and has an enrollment capacity of 24 students.
Observations sampling criterion 2. Two sections each of the upper-division GE Area
C4 and D5 writing-intensive classroom settings at CSS also were selected via a convenience
sampling procedure for participation in this study. Enrollment capacity in those courses varies
but typically does not exceed a capacity of 30 students.
Observations protocol. Observations of the eight course sections were formal in that
both the instructor and the students were invited to sign consent forms prior to the first
observation session. The researcher’s role in the classroom setting was as complete observer,
and the observations intended to assist in answering to what extent CSS’ writing curriculum
supports students in their efforts to improve their levels of writing proficiency (Merriam &
Tisdell, 2016). The researcher joined one class session of each of the four lower-division and
four upper-division writing courses to observe the contents of the classes, including each class
session’s learning objective(s) and how the students engage in activities in order to meet the
objective(s). Primarily during class sessions, the researcher observed how writing instruction is
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facilitated in the classroom, but because the researcher also took note of student engagement in
the instruction, the teacher ensured that students consented to their indirect participation in the
research project. Descriptive notes were taken if/when students engaged in peer response
activities or low-stakes/in-class writing activities in an effort to capture dialogue and nonverbal
communication during the class session. The class-session observations for each course were
scattered throughout eight weeks to gain a broad sense of how classes engage in material
throughout the term. These observations occurred after survey response collection began and
before interviews and focus group sessions. The observation notes did not include student-
identifying information and were not intrusive to the everyday functions of the classes.
Observation notes were typed on a state-issued, password protected laptop. See Appendix F for
the classroom observation recruitment letter, Appendix G for the Informed Consent Sheet for
Observation Participation, and Appendix H for the observation protocol.
Document Analysis
In addition to classroom observations, the principal investigator collected and analyzed
six writing assignments and seven course syllabi from the eight classes observed. (A writing
assignment from GE Communication Area A3, English 145: Reasoning, Argumentation, and
Writing was not collected; as well, an assignment and syllabus was not collected from GE
Communication Area A3, English 149: Technical Writing for Engineers.) The instructors of
each of those eight courses were invited to submit a copy of the writing assignment, if any,
related to instruction during the day of the observation along with the course syllabus. Both
documents were considered to be helpful contextually for observation and were also valuable for
analysis. In addition, 64 academic degree program flowcharts were printed from the CSS Office
of the Registrar website. These materials were used to triangulate data collected from other
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methods in an effort to determine how often writing is assigned, what portion of a course grade is
reliant upon a student’s writing skills, and to what extent a degree program requires students to
practice and demonstrate writing skills. Specifically, document analysis assisted in answering
the following research question: to what extent does CSS’ writing curriculum help students meet
CSU proficiency standards?
Writing assignments, course syllabi, and degree program flowcharts are grounded in the
real world and are therefore artifacts worthy of analysis. Writing assignments and course syllabi,
which essentially are personal documents owned by instructors, were collected from the eight
instructors observed for this study. Merriam and Tisdell (2016) claim that personal documents
“are a good source of data concerning a person’s attitudes, beliefs, and view of the world” (p.
166). These documents may therefore reflect the degree to which an instructor values writing
and understands best practices in writing instruction. In addition to analyzing writing
assignments and course syllabi, CSS’ 64 bachelor’s degree program flowcharts were collected
and analyzed. Flowcharts are public documents available through the Office of the Registrar and
therefore are readily accessible. As Miles, Huberman, and Saldaña (2014, p. 304) suggest,
personal and public documents assist in conducting an if/then test when drawing conclusions
based on results of collected data. Hypothetically, if data analysis concluded that the design of
the writing assignments did not align with best practices and course syllabi and degree programs
rarely emphasized writing requirements, then the researcher may have concluded that such
limited opportunities for effective and sustained writing practice prevented students from
achieving expected levels of writing proficiency, particularly if results from other methods
confirmed that conclusion. To be sure, there were limitations to document analysis as a research
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method, yet in triangulation with other methods of data collection, such data was valuable to this
study.
Institutional Data Report
The researcher requested an ad hoc data report of 7,786 students using Writing
Proficiency Exam (WPE) results over the last two academic years. Data was disaggregated by
gender, major, admit type, grade point average, and remediation status in addition to whether
students were identified in the system as underserved student based on the institution’s URM
flag, whether the student had completed first-year writing for multilingual students, whether they
were first generation, and whether they had Pell Grant eligibility. The researcher acknowledges
that such data reports neither account for individual variables nor reflect complex student
narratives; yet, taken as a whole and in triangulation with other collected data, this report
suggested trends in student performance and assisted in answering the following research
question: to what extent do CSS students’ writing proficiency levels influence the achievement
gap and/or play a role in students’ time to graduation.
Data Analysis
Analysis of collected data included survey responses; interview and focus group
transcriptions; observation notes; course syllabi, writing assignments, and degree program
academic flowcharts; and an institutional data report. The researcher looked for themes apparent
in responses to the following research questions:
1. To what extent does the institution’s curriculum help students meet CSU upper-division
writing proficiency standards?
2. To what extent do students’ writing proficiency levels influence the achievement gap
and/or play a role in students’ time to graduation?
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3. What are the knowledge, motivation, and organizational influences related to improving
students’ levels of writing proficiency and preparing them for workforce and civic
responsibilities?
Themes across data sources were represented by the specific knowledge, motivation, and
organizational influences as established in the conceptual framework. In particular, themes
revealed stakeholders’ understanding and application of multiple literacies and context-specific
writing conventions to reach particular audiences and achieve particular purposes. Themes also
revealed stakeholders’ self-efficacy and self-reflective practices as well as their values and goals
related to writing skills for academic, professional, and civic success. Those themes were
examined against the backdrop of the campus culture as it influences students’ experiences with
writing and writing education.
Analysis of data began during collection of survey responses. Preliminary analysis of
students’ answers to survey items identified the frequency with which students ordered items
related to questions about their writing and writing education, and such frequencies influenced
discussion during interviews and focus groups. For interviews, focus groups, and observations,
data analysis began during data collection. The principal investigator wrote analytic memos after
each interview, focus group session, and classroom observation. The researcher documented
thoughts, concerns, and initial conclusions about the data in relation to the study’s questions and
conceptual framework. Once the researcher completed interview and focus group sessions,
recorded data files were sent to Rev, an online transcription service; data files were returned as
transcripts in Word format and were then coded. In the first phase of analysis, the investigator
began with an open coding approach to data analysis, looking for empirical codes and applying a
priori codes from the conceptual framework such as those associated with knowledge of
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particular writing skills, motivational influences to improve one’s skills, and the role the campus
culture of writing plays in doing so. A second phase of analysis then was conducted where
empirical and a priori codes were aggregated into analytic/axial codes. In the third phase of data
analysis, the researcher identified pattern codes and themes that emerged in relation to the
conceptual framework and research questions.
Documents and institutional data reports were analyzed for evidence consistent with
findings from the survey, interviews, focus group sessions, and observations coupled with the
concepts in the conceptual framework. In particular, codes and themes analyzed across syllabi
and degree program requirements signaled the culture of writing on campus. Institutional data
reports revealed trends in student writing performance in relation to achievement and/or time to
degree. See Appendix I for the research analysis plan.
Credibility and Trustworthiness

While there are particular measures by which researchers ensure the validity and
reliability of quantitative studies, a qualitative researcher, too, must establish the credibility and
trustworthiness of a project (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Researchers maintain the authenticity of
their qualitative studies by deeply examining the interpretation of their results against the
worldviews and assumptions upon which the study is founded (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). The
particular worldview that underlies this study is that an advanced level of writing proficiency is a
necessary and valuable skillset for all college graduates regardless of discipline. This research
project is grounded in the philosophy that writing is an iterative process that includes both an
analysis of the rhetorical situation that surrounds the communicative act and an engagement in
reflection throughout drafting and revising processes. This study also embraces the
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understanding that postsecondary degree programs have their own discourse concepts and
conventions with which students must be familiar upon graduation.
To be sure, this study’s methods of data collection were rigorous, which assisted in
legitimizing the results. Perhaps more important, the interpretation of those results was
thoroughly challenged to ensure that the knowledge constructed, while influenced by the theory
of social constructionism and the field of rhetoric and composition, is trustworthy. Specifically,
this study implemented multiple validity strategies. First and foremost, the researcher has spent
a prolonged amount of time in the field and at the research site; therefore, the researcher has an
in-depth understanding of the normative practices within the localized context in which this
research was situated (Creswell, 2014). As well, this study incorporated triangulation in that
methods of data were collected from a variety of sources, which experts assert is a sound strategy
to assure credibility and trustworthiness (Creswell, 2014; Maxwell, 2013; Merriam & Tisdell,
2016). In addition, the methodology incorporated thick description to help readers gain the
clearest sense of the research setting, and the results will be examined against the researcher’s
bias, particularly via peer debriefing and member checking (Creswell, 2014; Merriam & Tisdell,
2016). In those instances, a peer in the field, a colleague at CSS, was invited to read the findings
and offer insights while the researcher was drafting the report.
To maintain further the credibility and trustworthiness of this qualitative study, the
researcher employed reflexivity and constant comparisons. Reflexivity invites researchers to
consider how their identities and backgrounds affect the research process (Creswell, 2014;
Maxwell, 2013; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). This researcher was reflexive throughout the
collection and interpretation of data, especially considering what Fine (1994) refers to as
working the hyphen within the self and in relation to the other. Specifically, the researcher
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recognized that her positionality includes that of a white, cisgendered, heterosexual single
mother and writing program administrator who comes from a Midwestern, working-class
background. Such an intersection of identities and experiences may have shaped how students
responded during interviews and focus group sessions, for example, and may have influenced the
direction of the study overall. In addition to being reflexive throughout the gathering and
analysis of data, during interpretation, the researcher engaged in constant comparisons (Merriam
& Tisdell, 2016) of the collected data from the survey, focus group sessions, observations, and
document analysis in an effort to develop a “holistic account” of the problem (Creswell, 2014, p.
186) and to discern whether or not there were alternative explanations for results.
Overall, in order to establish the credibility and trustworthiness of this study, the
researcher made every effort to ensure that readers are convinced of the rigor in which the study
was conducted, both in the data collection and in the data analysis stages. Not only were the
qualitative components of this study credible and trustworthy through carefully executed
strategies, but also the researcher worked to protect the validity and reliability of the quantitative
components.
Validity and Reliability
Beyond careful attention to validity and reliability in the construction of specific survey
items, this study incorporated several practices to ensure that the quantitative design of the
research on the whole was valid and reliable. First, in terms of addressing potential threats to the
internal validity of the study, as Robinson Kurpius and Stafford (2006) suggest, “more than one
strand of evidence is needed” (p. 154). To account for internal validity, then, results from the
survey were compared to data collected from interviews, focus groups, observations, document
analysis, and disaggregated data from two years of Writing Proficiency Exam results. If the
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survey measured its intended constructs based on comparisons with other results, then findings
would be comparable and therefore valid (Creswell, 2014; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).
In addition, as Maxwell (2013) explains, validity “depends on the relationship of [one’s]
conclusions to reality” (p. 121). It is important, in other words, for findings to be representative
or applicable across contexts in the real world. While this study occurred at one particular
postsecondary institution, and therefore cannot guarantee generalizable findings per se, the
sample of survey participants was such that threats to the study’s external validity would be
minimal. The survey was cross-sectional (Creswell, 2014) in that data was collected at one point
in time during the middle to end of the fall term. Furthermore, participants represented a random
sample in that all students enrolled in lower- and upper-division writing-related classes within
the GE program were invited to complete the survey. In that regard, the participant sample was
large enough, at least in comparison to the total student population at the research site, to
represent students from diverse populations and backgrounds at different levels of degree
completion. To account for response bias, this study incorporated wave analysis (Creswell,
2014): the researcher examined survey “returns on select items week by week to determine if
average responses change” (Leslie, 1972, as cited in Creswell, 2014, p. 162). And, while it
would have been impossible for the survey sample to provide universal findings to the extent that
any sample population could signify a collective or transferable conclusion, the methods of this
study were mindful to incorporate a large selection process of participants to minimize threats to
its external validity (Creswell, 2014; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).
In this study, strategies also were in place to minimize potential threats to the internal
reliability of the study. To ensure the internal reliability of the study, the collection, analysis,
and interpretation of data remained consistent throughout the research process (Creswell, 2014;
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Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). For example, the survey was offered online and invitations to
complete the survey, which included information about the purpose of the study, were identical
across all levels of potential participation. While the researcher could not control for the context
in which participants completed the survey, collection of data was consistent in that it was
anonymous via an online site. As well, all interviews and focus group sessions followed a semi-
structured format and all observations also had a particular protocol. Finally, in the data
investigation and interpretation stages, descriptive analysis (Creswell, 2014) was employed,
which led to transparency about the methods, sample, settings, and documents of the research
project. Incorporating descriptive data analysis and interpretation assisted the researcher and
readers in discerning the results of the study.
In all, while validity of a study ensures that a researcher(s) is measuring what she, he, or
they set out to measure, the reliability of a study assures other researchers and readers that the
study is reproducible. To that end, the study’s principal investigator took copious notes
throughout the process and clearly outlined the study’s data collection and analysis protocols in
line with best practices in quantitative and qualitative research (Creswell, 2014; Merriam &
Tisdell, 2016). It was imperative that this research project implemented such practices so that
readers trust its findings and can replicate it should they be interested in doing so. In addition, in
order to ensure that readers have confidence in the study’s methods, interpretations, and findings,
a number of ethical considerations were put in place.
Ethics
The principal investigator of any study is obligated to act ethically throughout the
research process. Particularly when human subjects are involved, the primary responsibility of a
researcher is to do no harm (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016; Rubin & Rubin, 2012). Human subjects
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were involved in this research, and the investigator ensured that no participant was harmed in the
process of this study. In an effort to mitigate any potentially negative experiences associated
with the research, each participant was given an information sheet to review prior to agreeing to
participate. The sheet described the purpose and procedures of the study. In addition, the sheet
provided information about any risks or benefits associated with participation. Finally, the sheet
explained that survey data would be collected anonymously, focus group transcriptions would
use pseudonyms, and observation notes would not include student-identifying information. On
the whole, the researcher made every attempt to articulate to potential participants that they
would remain anonymous in the reporting and discussing of findings. Once participants read
through the information sheet and were clear about their voluntary role in the study, they were
asked to sign an informed consent form. This process was in line with best practices in human
subjects research (Glesne, 2011; Maxwell, 2013; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016; Rubin & Rubin,
2012).
While the principal investigator of this study did her best to conduct ethically sound
research, it is important to note that the investigator holds a management position in the
organization at which the study took place. It therefore may appear that the investigator had a
conflict of interest with the study. Indeed, the investigator has a vested interest in the results of
this research because her management role is directly associated with the study: the researcher’s
duties and responsibilities within the organization are such that she is in part responsible for
ensuring that students receive effective and progressive writing instruction and complete the
university’s graduation writing requirement. Nevertheless, the researcher’s position or salary did
not hinge upon the outcomes of this study. Students involved in the study did not have grades or
class performances affected by participation because the researcher was not the instructor of
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record for any student during the time of data collection. Participation in the study was
anonymous for the survey, and in survey, interview, focus group, and observation protocols,
students could withdraw from participation at any time. Despite the researcher’s administrative
role on campus as the GWAR Coordinator, neither students nor faculty were coerced into
participating in the study. Overall, any conflict of interest for the principal investigator was
undermined by the intention behind the study, which is to support student success.
Because of the subjective nature of the content of this study, one that examines students’
experiences with writing instruction at the institution, the researcher accounted for a number of
assumptions and biases. First and foremost, the principal investigator recognized that she
examined students’ responses through her white, middle class lens, a lens that affords privilege
and a particular discourse community that some student participants likely did not share. As
well, the principal investigator not only serves in a management position at the institution at
which the study takes place but also has worked within the field of writing studies for the past
sixteen years. Both those components of the researcher’s identity could have influenced the
qualitative examination of students’ experiences with the organization’s writing curriculum
because the investigator has a more nuanced understanding of writing and writing education
from which to draw conclusions based on students’ responses to questions. Both quantitative
and qualitative researchers must take time to consider ethical issues like these (Glesne, 2011;
Merriam & Tisdell, 2016), and the principal investigator of this study did her utmost to be
mindful of such throughout the process.
In all, the researcher recognized that it was not the intent of this study to judge
participants’ negatively for having a particular experience with writing education at the
institution, especially if that experience was anything other than the researcher’s own (Merriam
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& Tisdell, 2016). The researcher also recognized that it would be nearly impossible to avoid
forming opinions about students based on their responses to survey, interview, and focus group
questions. While the students’ survey responses were anonymous, those students who took part
in interview and focus group conversations did risk such opinions being formed (Maxwell,
2013). Student participation was voluntary, so any student concerned by this could opt out.
Overall, the researcher’s aim was to focus results and conclusions not on the students but
on the writing curriculum and their experiences with it. The researcher intended to take on the
role of what Glesne (2011) refers to as the intervener/reformer in that the outcome of this study
is to reform writing education for the benefit of students enrolled at the institution. After all, the
purpose of this study was not to make assumptions or generalize about students on campus but to
evaluate the institution’s writing curriculum and make recommendations for reform in an effort
to assist the organization in meeting its 2025 performance goals.
Limitations and Delimitations
As with any method of research, there were a number of anticipated limitations and
delimitations to this study. Specifically, the study could not control for how students responded
to survey items or questions during interview and focus group sessions. In each of those
methods, it was possible that by virtue of participating in the study, students would adjust their
responses or performances to align with what they believe would be the expected outcome of the
research. To be sure, the survey items and interview/focus group questions were designed to
elicit specific information. Also, the researcher could control neither how instructors designed
classroom activities nor how students responded to those activities during observation sessions.
The researcher’s involvement with the institution also may have served as a limitation during
analysis and interpretation of the data collected. Yet, given the researcher’s administrative role
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on campus, particularly as the GWAR coordinator, it is important that she opted not to evaluate
more closely pathways to GWAR completion, but, rather, to examine students’ experiences with
the campus’s writing curriculum overall. Not doing so was a conscious choice to set boundaries
for the study. Furthermore, this study focused solely on the writing program at one institution
within the CSU system. With additional time, the researcher could have more broadly examined
the CSS writing program by observing more class sessions, collecting more writing assignments,
and having direct conversations with more students. Writing programs at all 23 campuses as
well could have been examined to determine systemwide gaps in performance and affirm best
practices. Finally, while the researcher could analyze data with a number of theoretical and
ideological constructs about writing and writing education as a means to produce skilled laborers
and responsible citizens, she adhered to the principle that tenets of good writing are co-created
by the communities involved in the doing and receiving of communicative acts and are
influenced by economic, political, and social forces. She opted to filter her analytical lens
through a framework of critical literacy in which individuals engage in education to gain skills
necessary both to participate in and critique the societies in which they operate.

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CHAPTER FOUR: RESULTS
This study aimed to understand students’ experiences with writing education at CSS. In
particular, research questions were designed to answer to what extent the institution’s curriculum
helps students meet CSU upper-division writing proficiency standards; to what extent students’
writing proficiency levels influence the achievement gap and/or play a role in students’ time to
graduation; and the knowledge, motivation, and organizational influences related to improving
students’ levels of writing proficiency for academic success, workforce readiness, and civic
engagement. Responses to survey, interview, and focus group questions were collected in
addition to notes taken during eight observations in lower- and upper-division writing-intensive
courses. Writing assignments, course syllabi, and academic degree program flowcharts were
collected, and an ad hoc institutional data report was collected for students who had attempted to
complete the Graduation Writing Assessment Requirement (GWAR) between fall of 2015 and
fall of 2017.
Study Participants
One hundred and forty-two students participated directly in the study via completion of
the survey and/or engagement in an interview or focus group discussion. Of those students, 134
completed the online survey. Fifty-three survey respondents were enrolled in the lower-division
General Education (GE) Communication Area A3 course; 31 were enrolled in the upper-
division, writing intensive GE Arts and Humanities Area C1 course; 22 were enrolled in the
upper-division, writing intensive GE Arts and Humanities Area C2 course; 18 were enrolled in
the upper-division, writing intensive GE Arts and Humanities Area C4 course; three were
enrolled in the upper-division, writing intensive GE Society and the Individual Area D5 course;
one had previously been required to complete the first-year development writing course; and six
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were international students. Of the 134 students who completed the survey, 26% indicated they
entered CSS with fluency in a language(s) other than English.
Three students participated in hour-long interviews, one female and two males, none who
had fulfilled the university’s GWAR prior to the interviews. The female was an English major in
her fourth year at the university. In addition to several upper-division literature courses, she was
enrolled in a GE Arts and Humanities Area C4 course, English 347: African American
Literature, during the time of the interview. One of the two male students interviewed was a
first-time, first-year sociology major who earned advanced placement credit for the GE
Communication Area A1 course; he was enrolled in English 145: Reasoning, Argumentation,
and Writing during the time of the interview. The other male student who participated in an
interview was an upper-division transfer student majoring in biomedical engineering; he was
enrolled in English 149: Technical Writing for Engineers during the time of the interview.
Two hour-long focus group sessions were held, during which five students participated:
one of the focus group sessions consisted of two students, and three students participated in the
other session. Of the five focus group participants, only one had fulfilled the GWAR through an
upper-division English course. A female, second-year sociology major attended the first of the
two focus group sessions; she was enrolled in a GE Arts and Humanities Area C1 course during
the time of the discussion session. Another second-year student participated in the first of the
two focus group sessions. He was a degree-seeking international student majoring in physics
who was not enrolled in any writing-intensive GE courses during the time of the session. Prior
to the semester during which the focus group discussion took place, this student had fulfilled the
GE Communication Area A1 and A3 course requirements: he completed English 133: Writing
and Rhetoric for Multilingual Students and English 145: Reasoning, Argumentation, and
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Writing. As well, he had fulfilled one of the GE Arts and Humanities Area C lower-division
writing-intensive courses by completing Philosophy 230: Philosophical Classics: Knowledge and
Reality. Finally, an international student on exchange at the university attended the first focus
group session. He was enrolled in 400-level architecture courses during the semester when the
focus group discussion occurred.
For the second of the two focus group sessions, two students participated. One of the
participants, a female degree-seeking international student, was in her final term as an
undergraduate student and had been accepted into the post-baccalaureate mathematics program.
She was admitted to CSS as a first-time first-year student in the fall of 2014. During the time of
the focus group session, she was not enrolled in writing-intensive courses, but she had completed
an upper-division, writing-intensive GE Society and the Individual Area D5 course, Business
311: Managing Technology in the International Legal Environment, the semester prior to the
focus group discussion. The other focus group participant was an electrical engineering major
who also enrolled at CSS as a first-time first-year student in 2014. This student participated in
summer institute in 2014, an orientation program offered through the university’s Educational
Opportunity Program, which is designed to support historically, financially, and/or educationally
disadvantaged students and is an active member of the Gamma Zeta Alpha Latino-interest
fraternity. This student was not enrolled in any writing-intensive courses during the time of the
focus group discussion; it had been almost a year since he completed a writing course.
Indirectly, another 195 students were present in the following eight GE writing-intensive
lower- and upper-division courses the researcher observed during this study: English 133:
Writing and Rhetoric for Multilingual Students; English 134: Writing and Rhetoric; English 145:
Reasoning, Argumentation, and Writing; English 149: Technical Writing for Engineers;
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Religious Studies 302: Abrahamic Religions; Interdisciplinary Studies for Liberal Arts 320:
Topics in Values, Media, and Culture; Psychology 318: Psychology of Aging; and Ethnic
Studies 323: Mexican American Cultural Images. Students in these courses were fulfilling one
of the university’s lower- or upper-division writing-intensive GE course requirements and
represented all undergraduate class levels. Since during observations the researcher did not seek
the names of specific student participants, and only recorded the number of students present
during the data of observation, the exact makeup of these students is unknown.
In addition to student representation gleaned from survey, interview, and focus group
participation as well as the number of students indirectly involved in the study during
observations, data points from a total of 7,786 students who attempted to complete the GWAR
via the Writing Proficiency Exam (WPE) between fall of 2015 and fall of 2017 were analyzed.
Of those 7,786 students, 3,736 were female; 1,179 were identified as underrepresented minority
students using the university’s designation
7
; 1,400 were Pell Grant recipients; 510 were
identified as first generation college student whose parents may have had some college education
but who had not earned a college degree; 150 earned a score of 146 or less on the CSU English
Placement Test (EPT) and were thereby required to fulfill the systemwide remediation
requirement; and 50 had completed English 133: Writing and Rhetoric for multilingual students.
Of the 7,786 students included in the ad hoc data report, Figure B, below, charts representation
across the six colleges at CSS. These totals are similar to the makeup of the student population
as a whole where about 28% of students are College of Engineering majors; 19% are majors in
the Collage of Agriculture, Food, and Environmental Science; 16% are College of Liberal Arts
majors; Orfalea College of Business majors make up 14% of the student population; 13% of

7
As a reminder, at CSS, an under-represented minority student (URM) is defined as a student
whose race/ethnicity is Hispanic, African American, Native American, Hawaiian/Pacific
Islander, or multi-racial with at least one of those four ethnicities (Institutional Research, 2016).
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from the College of Science and Mathematics; and 09% of student are College of Architecture
and Environmental Design majors.

Figure B. Institutional Data Report Student Participation Disaggregated by Major
While participation in the online survey (n=134) reflects 0.6% of the total student
population and a total of eight interview and focus group discussion participants hardly serves as
a representative sample of the CSS student population, responses to the survey, interview, and
focus group questions offer rich material for analysis, especially when triangulated by the
classroom experience of the 195 students observed and the 7,786 students included in the ad hoc
data report. Combined, the collected data served to answer the three research questions of this
study: to what extent does CSS’ writing curriculum help students meet CSU upper-division
proficiency standards; to what extend do students’ writing proficiency levels influence the
achievement gap and/or play a role in students’ time to graduation; and what are the knowledge,
motivation, and organizational influences related to improving students’ levels of writing
proficiency and preparing them for workforce and civic responsibilities?
7%
17%
30% 15%
14%
15%
2% 0%
Student Participation Disaggregated by Major
CAED
CAFES
CENG
CLA
CSM
OCOB
Extended Ed
Unspecified
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Results and Findings
The results and findings presented in this section cover the following themes related to
this study’s research questions. First, writing and writing education will be discussed through
the lens of the first research question: to what extent does the institution’s curriculum help
students meet CSU upper-division writing proficiency standards? College readiness in English
and its relationship to degree attainment will then be analyzed in an effort to address the second
research question: to what extent do students’ writing proficiency levels influence the
achievement gap and/or play a role in students’ time to graduation? Finally, the answer to the
third research question about the knowledge, motivation, and organizational influences on
writing skills attainment at the university will be examined thematically using the tenets
established in this study: that knowledge of writing includes multiple literacies, genre and
discourse conventions, and audience awareness; that the value students place on writing, their
sense of self-efficacy, and their goals influence their motivation to improve their skills; and,
finally, that the culture of writing and the transfer of learning serve as organizational influences
on students’ writing and writing education.
Writing and Writing Education
To what extent does the curriculum at CSS help prepare students to meet upper-division
writing proficiency standards and succeed post degree? While the Career Services unit of CSS
did not have any recent data points from employers available to analyze in relation to students’
writing skills post degree, based on student responses to survey, interview, and focus group
questions, the university is not succeeding at helping students attain advanced levels of writing
proficiency prior to graduation. Classroom observations and document analysis also confirmed
this finding.
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Slightly above half of survey respondents (n=69, or 52.27%) indicated that attainment of
writing skills could best be described as good; however, those who added short answers to the
same question painted a more dismal picture. One student stated,
Because CSS doesn't have a writing requirement my professors were forced to
scale back on how harshly they graded writing, I had less to gain in terms of fine-
tuning my writing abilities. Still, I had a lot to learn about writing in the style of
my academic discipline, and I did learn through my personal experiences with
professors, but not so much in class as in separate interactions (for out-of-class
research). One of my C2 (literature) professors did not extensively talk about
improving our own writing abilities in class but he left office hours open for
revisions (as many professors do for assignments) and his comments were
definitely evaluating me as an individual and not through a standardized scale.
That sounds bad—it’s not. I think the grade I received was scaled to the class’s
performance, but the comments were more incisive and showed he was paying
attention to my individual writing abilities.
Another survey respondent said, “I haven't had any instruction on how to write necessarily,” and
another concurred:
There has been nothing in my curriculum at [CSS] that would improve my writing
skills; I only have had to write a paper on one occasion, and it was an opinion
piece. I get a lot of essay questions on exam that are very long, and I guess
because we are rushed they don’t really care about grammar or how you write,
just that you get in all the words they wanted you to memorize on the topic.
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While one survey respondent disconfirmed this finding when s/he stated, “Where I feel my skills
in math are constantly decreasing, my skills with the written word are constantly improving,” yet
another student countered that sentiment by responding to the survey question about writing
skills attainment in the following manner: “I think in most classes, even shitty writers can get a
B+. I know that I can half ass most writing assignments and still do well.” Another student
validated that response:
I can write what’s asked of me, but, if I do not have much time to revise and
compose, in particular, if it’s a very first draft I need to turn in in class or some
other setting, my overall writing quality is lower than I’d like it to be.
Finally, another survey respondent stated,
The only classes I have been in (besides Tech Writing and COMS) where writing
was even mentioned were professors or guest speakers saying “It is well known
by most hiring managers that CSS does NOT produce the best writers...” which I
find pretty sad.
In sum, comments by survey respondents suggest that students recognize the lack of writing and
writing education on campus.
While interview and focus group participants also commented on the lack of writing and
writing education, two students who participated in either an interview or focus group discussion
recognized that there were some writing-focused aspects of the CSS curriculum. Like the
statement above by the survey respondent who stated that writing was at least mentioned in a
technical writing class, one of the interviewees indicated that he was currently enrolled in a
technical communication class and has “an assignment every single class.” Another interviewee
felt that because he was required to take a technical writing class and fulfill the GWAR, the
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university cared about students’ writing skills development. He explained, “I was like, ‘why
more writing?’ I thought I was done with writing in math, but they have me doing more writing
and less math.” Later in the interview, he explained that in his opinion, CSS wanted to help
students improve their writing skills for a particular reason:
They want to make my writing better so that once I leave and I am writing
documents as an engineer from CSS, I’m making a good image. They want to
invest in their students knowing that their students are going to be working at the
top companies.
This student’s comment fares positively in terms of the research question regarding writing and
writing education on campus; yet, more often than not, students commented that their writing
education was lacking at CSS.
The strong responses to the survey question about writing skills attainment at CSS were
similar to those expressed during interview and focus group sessions when students also
indicated they rarely write in, or for, their classes. The English major who was interviewed, for
example, suggested that juniors and seniors were particularly concerned about their writing skills
because they rarely practiced them. She mused about students’ fear of the GWAR in particular
and came to this conclusion: “Personally, I think any apprehension that students have about the
GWAR is just because they haven’t been writing in that way, which is unfortunate, but also
given the way that this school’s curriculum is set up, I understand.” She continued to explain
that by the time students are expected to fulfill the requirement:
They haven’t been exposed to writing in a while. Writing, like anything, is a
muscle that you have to exercise constantly if you want to get better at it. […]
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They haven’t been working with that muscle in a while, and maybe it is because
of the curriculum.
The English major interviewee went on to make the connection that “in GE classes, there are
writing requirements […] and maybe because students don’t have the ability to take them, […]
by the time they get around to the GWAR, maybe that’s why they don’t pass.” Two other
students who attended a focus group discussion confirmed the English major’s sense:
Speaker 1: It’s not talked about at all. It’s not in my conversation to…
Speaker 2: We both haven’t had a class and had to write besides…
Speaker 1: Lab reports, right?
Speaker 2: Right. Besides that, what also are we writing?
Speaker 1: Writing numbers, maybe, all day.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: We’re really good at that.
Speaker 1 went on to explain that even during her senior project, which was “a short book, like
20 or 30 pages long,” she needed to explain numbers and symbols in real-world language and
answer “why would an industry consider doing such things to optimize their system,” so she did
a little bit of writing, “a couple of paragraphs.” To the researcher, making an argument for
implementation of a new program/process for industry optimization seems like it would take
more than a couple of paragraphs, but this focus group participant depicted something different.
It could be the case that the genre and discourse conventions in which the student wrote her
senior project did not call for a lot of writing, but based on the students’ comments all together, it
also could be the case that the institution is not requiring a lot writing and/or offering a lot of
writing instruction for the senior project. If CSS students are to be well prepared for writing
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success post degree, then providing opportunities for writing instruction and sustained writing
practice at all levels of the college experience are important, as the literature suggests.
The finding that students have few opportunities to write or engage in writing instruction
was confirmed during classroom observations as well. Four lower-division writing-intensive
courses were observed for a total of four hours and 20 minutes of observation. During that time,
very little writing instruction was offered to students. To be fair, in one of the lower-division
classes, English 149: Technical Writing for Engineers, student groups presented “how-to”
videos. In the other GE Communication Area A3 class, English 145: Reasoning, Argumentation,
and Writing, two minutes of direct writing instruction occurred when a student asked the
instructor to speak about the difference between a solution and a call to action. The instructor
explained that a call to action was specific for the intended audience whereas a solution was
more general. During that same class session, students engaged in peer review for 25 of the 50-
minute class. While no direct writing instruction occurred during peer review, it is safe to
assume at some point earlier in the term students were instructed on how to respond to peers’
works effectively because the researcher observed full class participation in the activity.
Of the other two lower-division classes observed, the first-year composition courses for
native and multilingual speakers, about 70 minutes of class time included modeling of analysis
and integration of sources, but during those moments (30 minutes of one class session and 40
minutes of another), there seemed to be a lot of assumptions about students’ abilities to transfer
that level of analysis and synthesis to their own writing. For example, students in one of the
classes separated into groups first to analyze points from a particular reading and then to answer
questions using their “collective knowledge” of three assigned readings. Afterward, students
were asked, in groups, to write a paragraph in which they argued the importance of race using
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the three readings as sources. Students did not appear to be engaged in discussing the questions
or in writing collectively a response to the prompt during these activities. From the observer’s
standpoint, it seemed to be the case that the students were unsure how to complete the tasks.
Perhaps they did not complete the assigned readings ahead of time or perhaps they did not see
the connection between the activities and their own writing education. Without any follow-up
discussion with students, it is hard to know for sure. Based on the literature, the classroom
activities observed during this 30-minute activity (the analysis and synthesis of multiple
perspectives) were a valuable addition to the course’s writing curriculum, but only if the
instructor used students’ engagement in such activities as prompts for further understanding
about how analysis and synthesis of sources impacts the success of both students’ writing tasks
and their ways of being in the world. In a two-hour class session, some clarity as to how those
skills would apply directly to their assignments and more generally to their worlds might have
been a useful addition to the class conversation. To be fair, those connections may have been
made in subsequent class sessions, and the researcher did not observe them.
In the other lower-division class during which writing strategies were modeled, there was
a clearer connection between such activities and students’ own writing tasks. The class focused
on reading and understanding both a video clip and a student essay about that video clip. At the
outset of the class session, the instructor reminded students about what question they ought to
ask themselves when selecting a topic to analyze for their writing assignment: is the material
interesting and does it warrant analysis? Such a reminder would suggest that the instructor had
in a previous class(es) instructed students about topic generation. After recalling for the students
all the texts in which they had engaged prior to today’s class session: a Louis C. K. piece,
student-written essays published in the university’s first-year composition textbook, the
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beginning of the HBO show Newsroom, and analysis of the three different horror films, the
instructor then referenced another text the students must have read and said that she wasn’t sure
how many readers were familiar with the topic, so maybe such a topic didn’t warrant analysis.
She then reminded students in their own analysis assignments to make a claim about the
rhetorical strategy of a text, point to a specific example in the text, and provide analysis. She
highlighted for the students that during her assessment of their assignments, she would be
considering whether the analysis was compelling and persuasive. She asked, “Are the claims
and examples all clear?” Then, while modeling analysis of a student essay about the Newsroom
video clip, the instructor read aloud passages from the essay and pointed out its repetitiveness.
As she continued, she commented that the video clip was pathos-heavy and the writer analyzing
the video clip did not address pathos—a missed opportunity for the writer. She also highlighted
for the class some examples of effective research and organization evident in the essay.
With eight minutes left in the class session, the instructor shifted to another assigned
reading for the day, another analysis essay. She stated, “The key here in this essay was that the
writer did not provide a clear enough summary of the source she was analyzing so that readers
unfamiliar with the original text could understand it and care about it.” In that moment, it
appeared that the instructor was warning her students what they would do well to avoid in their
own assignments, but the instructor did so only by implication—she did not then state explicitly
that students must include a summary in their own analysis assignments. It is quite possible that
in subsequent class sessions, the instructor built upon what was observed during this class
session, but no direct instruction on students’ own assignments was offered during the
observation. That is, students were not practicing writing strategies in class; instead, they
followed along as the instructor analyzed the strategies of other writers, apparently so they
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understood how she would assess theirs. Students were engaged during the class session, but it
was not evident to the researcher how well students would apply, or improve upon, those
strategies in their own works.
Overall during observations in lower-division classes, at least three of the four class
sessions incorporated writing-related activities or discussions for the majority of the time. At the
upper division, however, only one of the four classes focused on writing for more than ten
minutes of the period. Of the six and a half hours the researcher observed in upper-division,
writing-intensive GE courses, students wrote for a total of 32 minutes and engaged in direct
writing instruction for a total of 53 minutes
8
. In one of the upper-division writing classes
observed, the class session began with the instructor reading aloud three short writing prompts in
reference to Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise. The students then were expected to handwrite
their responses to the prompts and had about ten minutes to do so. The instructor explained to
the researcher ahead of time that the short writing prompts had low stakes. The students
submitted their handwritten responses, and, although the responses would not be graded, students
would receive feedback on them—feedback the students would then be expected to apply to their
in-class exams, which were graded. The instructor also explained to the researcher that students
would submit a portfolio at the end of the term that would include their short, low-stakes
writings. In the class session observed, no reference was made to students’ short, in-class
writings after students submitted them to the instructor.
In another upper-division, writing-intensive GE course, Psychology 318, after a 40-
minute lecture, the instructor had the students shift into groups organized by rows. Each row of

8
The instructor who offered direct writing instruction to his students has a PhD in English and
may be more comfortable teaching writing than colleagues outside the discipline of English;
however, another one of the instructors in this category has an advanced degree in English as
well, and his one hour and fifty-minute class session included a ten-minute in-class writing
exercise without mention of how that writing was relevant in or beyond the classroom context.
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students received a different case study for which the group was expected to respond in writing
to the following questions: is this abuse; if so, what type of abuse; should the abuse be reported;
and what will the outcomes be? One member of each group was asked to record the group’s
responses and submit the writing for points. Students engaged in small group discussions about
the case studies and questions, but only one student in each group was responsible for crafting
the response. In sum, seven students in the class wrote for about five to ten minutes during this
exercise while others in their respective groups dictated points and/or disengaged in the activity
once the writing portion of it took place. There was no direct writing instruction associated with
this writing activity – it appeared to be a low stakes writing to learn opportunity—and it was
unclear to the researcher if/how the instructor would provide feedback on the writing.
Another upper-division writing-intensive course also included about ten-minutes of
writing at the outset of class. This class, however, also incorporated direct writing instruction for
the remaining 53 minutes of the class. During direct writing instruction, the professor first
offered students specific strategies for writing effective thesis statements by defining a thesis
statement: “A thesis is the main argument in an academic essay. That’s what you’re writing – an
academic essay. You’re scholars. If you have a shitty thesis guess what about the paper?” he
asked. Several students replied almost in unison: “it’s shitty.” The professor then provided an
explanation of the Sheridan-Baker model, which he defined as one-to-two sentences with three
parts, including an “although” clause, a main argument, and a “because” clause. The professor
also offered students instruction on how to “taper” their paragraphs in relation to their writing
assignment about representations of futurity in a Chicano film. He wrote the following on the
whiteboard:
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Topic sentence(s) about the scene—that scene is all we talk about in this
paragraph;
Argument about the scene—how shit works, what shit does, and why it does it
only for this paragraph;
Paraphrase the evidence—summarize or direct quote when it’s really powerful;
Explain the significance of the evidence/the quote and the significance of the
argument;
Relate the paragraph’s argument to the thesis—state it and move on.
In addition to these specific writing strategies, the instructor also reminded students about the
five-paragraph organizational structure they likely had learned in prior writing classes. He said,
Now, let me teach you something else: the five-paragraph essay is like training
wheels on a bicycle. You guys are not kindergartners. You should not do the
five-paragraph essay. Actually, I tell students “don’t do five-paragraph thinking.”
It’s not the number of paragraphs. Let me explain. It’s a good model for
structure; it’s bad for thinking. “I’m right, I’m right, I’m right,” for the three
body paragraphs is just repeating your point. There’s no critical analysis, no
counterargument, no development of the argument. What do you do? In each
example, you’ve got to figure out how, what, and why.
Aside from the professor’s reference to the five-paragraph essay structure, there was no reference
to students’ prior writing learning experiences. Nevertheless, in this class, the researcher
observed a full class session devoted to writing and writing education
9
.

9
It is quite possible that the professor, who was aware of the scheduled observation and the
purpose of the observation, may have prepared a lesson on writing.
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The findings during classroom observations overall show that little to no direct writing
instruction took place in upper-division writing-intensive classes. Even in the lower-division
classes, writing instruction occurred in a more covert manner, and it was not obvious that
students understood how skills and strategies employed during classroom activities directly
applied to their own writing knowledge. Further, metacognitive skills were absent from any
classroom session—students were never invited to reflect on their own writing, whether that
writing was an in-class ten-minute response or a major, upcoming assignment. Based on survey,
interview, and focus group responses, and confirmed during classroom observation, then, writing
and writing education did not play a prominent role in students’ college experiences.
This observed lack was also evident during analysis of academic degree program
flowcharts. Upon review of the flowcharts, it appeared that students had fewer opportunities to
engage in GE courses in both sophomore and junior years, the years upon which students’
foundational first-year writing skills must be built in order for them to fulfill the GWAR and
complete final degree requirements, such as the senior project, in a timely manner. In fact, for
more than half of the degree program flowcharts analyzed, sophomore year was filled with
major-specific courses whereas senior year included unspecified GE courses in addition to
major-specific courses. Students at CSS are required to declare a major upon admission, and the
university believes such a policy is beneficial in myriad ways. Anecdotally, students appreciate
the opportunity to launch into major-specific classes immediately upon entry into college. While
there no doubt are benefits to this policy, it is worth considering whether (or how) such a policy
affects students’ writing development. Twenty-nine of the 64 degree program flowcharts
analyzed included between three and six unspecified GE courses during sophomore year
compared to 48 of the degree programs that listed that same range of unspecified GE courses in
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senior year with fewer or no GE classes during the sophomore year. At CSS, all GE courses are
expected to incorporate writing activities and base at least 10% of the final course grade on
writing, a practice intended to benefit students by offering sustained writing practice in a variety
of contexts. If students enroll in GE courses steadily throughout their college experience, then
they can build their writing and critical literacy skills over time. This opportunity is not possible
if students do not enroll in GE courses every year. The layout of coursework in degree program
flowcharts did not encourage students to engage in writing-intensive coursework progressively
toward graduation. Instead, more often than not flowcharts recommended students complete
foundational, first-year writing courses and then return to writing-intensive GE coursework later
in the last year of their programs
10
. In sum, a consistent amount of writing and writing education
was not apparent in the flowcharts, a finding that was confirmed during classroom observations
and in student responses to survey, interview, and focus group questions.
College Readiness in English and Degree Attainment
The findings in this section sought to address the following question: to what extent do
students’ writing proficiency levels influence the achievement gap and/or play a role in students’
time to graduation? According to results from the ad hoc data report, students deemed
underprepared to succeed in college-level English classes, those who earned a 146 or below on
the English Placement Test (EPT) (n=150), failed the upper-division writing proficiency exam
(WPE) at a rate of 32% compared to their college-ready peers (n=1080), who failed at a rate of
14%. A passing score on the WPE is required for degree attainment, so this data point suggests
that students’ writing proficiency levels do play a role in their time to graduation. This gap is
particularly notable given that all 150 students with an EPT score of 146 or lower included in the

10
It should be noted that the researcher was not accounting for any discipline-specific writing
courses; courses were not identified as such on any degree program flowchart.
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ad hoc data report fulfilled their remediation requirement by the end of their first year on campus
and thus would have been considered ready to succeed at college-level writing requirements.
Disaggregating even further by parsing out the under-served minority (URM) students who were
deemed under-prepared for college English based on their EPT score (n=54), their failure rate on
the WPE was similar: 31% of underprepared URM students failed the WPE compared to their
better-served, college-ready peers (n=6510) who, again, failed at a rate of 14%.
In addition to their failure rate on the WPE, the cumulative grade point average of
underprepared students suggests that students’ college readiness in English continues to play a
role in their success beyond completion of first-year writing requirements. By the time the 150
students who earned a score of 146 or below on the EPT upon admission to the university
reached upper-level class standing and attempted to fulfill the GWAR via the WPE, they had a
cumulative 2.85 grade point average (GPA), which was significantly lower than that of their
college-ready peers (n=7637), who had a cumulative 3.15 GPA. Among other questions, this
research project attempted to answer whether the same students struggle upon entrance and exit,
and institutional data alone suggested they do.
Underprepared students were not identified during interviews, focus groups, or classroom
observations, thus this finding could not be triangulated using those methods. Nevertheless, the
WPE failure rate and the GPA data points gathered from ad hoc institutional report suggest that
despite their success in first-year writing coursework, underprepared students would continue to
benefit from sustained writing practice and support. Responses from an underprepared student
who completed the survey validated that sentiment. Question 7 of the survey asked students to
describe their writing skills attainment as either poor, minimal, average, good, or superior. Of
the 132 students who responded to this survey item, the underprepared student described her
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writing skills attainment as average; the majority of the other students who responded to the
question (n=80) described their writing skills as either good or superior. As well, the
underprepared student indicated that she was somewhat prepared to apply the writing skills she
has gained in writing projects across the curriculum to a variety of professional, personal, and
civic contexts post graduation, whereas the majority of other students (n=75) indicated that they
were mostly or highly prepared. Survey data from this one student coupled with the institutional
data might suggest that underprepared students are less confident about their writing skills and
struggle to succeed at higher rates in comparison to their better-prepared peers. Educational
policymakers, as the literature revealed, are consistently concerned by how students’ college
readiness in English impacts their academic achievement, and data collected for this research
project validated that concern.
Knowledge Influences on Writing Skills Attainment
According to this study’s literature reviewed, a number of knowledge influences impact
students’ degree attainment and post-degree success. Particularly in the 21
st
century, the extent
to which students develop multiple literacies, apply genre and discourse-based conventions, and
attune to specific rhetorical situations affects their ability to participate effectively in regularly
shifting global contexts.
Multiple literacies. One key knowledge influence the literature suggested would impact
student success was the development of multiple literacies, or the meta-competencies required to
navigate among a variety of discourses, modes, and contexts. Data collected for this study
attempted to discern to what extent CSS was enhancing students’ multiliteracy skills.
Multiliteracy recognizes a shift from the study of English to an orientation of Englishes in
order to embrace the linguistic diversity of the 21
st
century. As such, survey items included
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several questions about students’ diverse language experiences. First and foremost, it would
seem that an embracement of linguistic diversity would include students’ own language varieties;
results from the survey indicate CSS does not do so: three of the six international students who
responded to the survey indicated that they strongly disagreed (n=2) or disagreed (n=1) that CSS
supports writers that speak more than one language. Eighty-two survey respondents indicated
that they never or rarely were encouraged to incorporate languages other than English or
varieties of English into their assigned projects. Fifty-nine percent of survey participants
strongly disagreed (n=21) or disagreed (n=51) that writing instruction at CSS was helping them
to view language difference as an asset in our 21
st
century global society. Finally, only
seventeen of the 128 students who responded to a survey question about their level of confidence
when making writing choices accessible to audiences from multiple language backgrounds
indicated that they were confident doing so. Classroom observations lent credence to these data
points. The researcher noted that languages other than English or varieties of English were not
present in the classroom. To be fair, in one class, the Ethnic Studies class, students were
required to submit a writing assignment based on their analysis of a Chicano film, but the film
was not discussed during class. Specifically, in the two classrooms in which instructors selected
texts for in-class analysis, those texts did not represent diverse voices.
In addition to language diversity, student development of multiple literacies includes the
ability to incorporate multiple modes of communication (such as written, oral, and visual). Data
collected from survey participants suggest that CSS is succeeding at preparing students in this
manner. Of the 129 students who responded to a survey item about multimodal projects, the
majority (n=80) indicated they never, rarely, or sometimes was required to do incorporate more
than one mode of communication, such as the written mode in addition to the visual and/or oral
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mode. On average, however, survey respondents indicated they were very confident in
incorporating digital technologies into their writing projects. In sum, 89% of survey respondents
indicated that they agreed or strongly agreed that writing instruction at CSS was preparing them
to incorporate multiple modes of communication (such as written, oral, and visual) into their
writing projects and integrate multiple skills (such as written, oral, visual, and digital) in order to
reach particular audiences and achieve particular purposes.
Of the eight class sessions observed, four integrated multiple modes of learning and one
required students to incorporate multiple modes during their presentations. The students in the
section of English 134 the researcher observed engaged in the viewing and analyzing of an 8-
minute scene from the HBO show Newsroom. After viewing the scene, the instructor asked:
what if you were writing an analysis of this, and conversation ensued. At one point during
analysis of the video clip, the instructor discussed how music cued a tonal shift intended to
inspire a wave of emotion in viewers. A student added that pathos was a strong part of the scene:
“you can hear the tension in the beginning with the music, and everything they put into it shows
that he is the main focus, he is the main character.” The researcher noted that all students were
engaged in the 20-minute analysis of this television clip.
As well, in one of the upper-division writing-intensive courses, students viewed a ten-
minute segment of the Stephen Colbert show where he discusses pizzagate, and the instructor
integrated themes of the video clip with themes of the DeLillo novel students were reading for
the course. The instructor then shifted and had the students watch a 2011 TED Talk, Beware
online “filter bubbles” by Eli Pariser, after which the instructor indicated that the arguments
Pariser made merited full consideration in connection with pizzagate and DeLillo, especially
since at this point in time Facebook, Twitter, and Google are directing information at users based
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on their prior browsing history. The instructor stated, “If we don’t know the authenticity of
information, it undermines the democratic process.” During the instructor’s presentation of this
material, about half the class appeared to be engaged. Others were looking down and doodling
on notebooks, staring into space, or instant messaging on their laptops. Regardless of the level
of engagement, the instructor of this class clearly incorporated multiple modes into the classroom
context, both as means of delivery and materials requiring analysis.
In the lower-division writing-intensive English 149: Technical Writing for Engineers
class, students were required to incorporate multiple modes of delivery during “how-to”
presentations. The presenters first shared videos integrating music, stop motion, and text and
then went through a slide presentation to highlight and explain the rhetorical choices they
embedded into the video. Students also were expected to submit to the instructor the script of
their video. In all, based on the researcher’s observation of these presentations, students in this
course were engaging in multiple literacies. As well, after two student groups presented, the
instructor explained the scope of an upcoming assignment: students would be required to
conduct a feasibility study and submit a report. The instructor encouraged students to choose a
topic that was manageable, incorporate two images and six sources (allowing them to combine
both scholarly and popular materials). In order to assist students in the design and integration of
the images, the instructor had scheduled a data visualization workshop with the data and GIS
expert in the library.
Genre and discourse conventions. Not only did the English 149: Technical Writing for
Engineers course offer students an opportunity to practice communicating using multiple
literacies, the course also required students to express themselves in a particular genre with
certain discourse conventions. The course as a whole is designed to train engineering majors to
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be adept in communicating in their field. As such, the researcher of this study observed the
instructor discussing the genres of “how-to” videos and feasibility reports. All other courses
observed, however, appeared to incorporate standard academic essay genres and conventions, an
observation confirmed during an interview with an English major who said,
With the English major, it’s very literature heavy, and I feel like a lot of our
writing assignments are just academic papers. There is so much more to writing
than just writing for an academic audience, and I know that’s true because I’m
doing the technical communication certificate, and I’ve learned much more about
writing through those classes.
The English major went on to add that she realized that different writing tasks required different
approaches to writing, so it was clear that she was aware of a variety of genres and discourse
conventions but did not have a lot of opportunities to practice them outside of her technical
writing courses.
Classroom observations and interview comments suggest that the institution may not be
preparing students for effective communication in a variety of genres and discourses; data
collected from survey items both confirm and disconfirm that finding. Students were asked to
describe their writing skills’ attainment on a scale ranging from poor to superior and then explain
their answer. On the one hand, one student, who rated himself as having good attainment,
responded, “Rhetoric and logical skills are the skills I have obtained for writing outside of my
primary curriculum, as well as a scientific formality for writing research papers.” This student’s
response would suggest he at least is aware of genre and discourse conventions. On the other
hand, another student who responded to the same survey item about writing skills attainment
stated,
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Probs won't be writing many things outside of college. Professional emails
maybe...was that taught to me no... figured it out by myself though. Thanks CSS.
Pretty much just had to write the same style bull shit essay I wrote for all my
years of going to school before going to college. And even after all that still
needed to take a writing proficiency exam lol
Of the 123 students who responded to a question about applying a variety of writing strategies to
meet the purposes of a particular communicative situation, 108 students (88%) agreed or strongly
agreed that they were capable of doing so. And, when asked to rate their level of confidence in
writing in the style of a particular discipline, 84 of 126 respondents (67%) were generally, very,
or extremely confident. Nevertheless, the student’s comment above might suggest that students
learned genres and discourse conventions in high school or independent of the CSS writing
program. This study did not seek to determine the exact source of student learning. In all,
findings suggested students were aware of and confident in their ability to communicate using
different genres and discourse conventions
11
.
Audience awareness. In addition to the importance of developing multiple literacies and
effectively employing genres and discourse conventions, the literature confirms the importance
of audience awareness, particularly for post degree success in the 21
st
century. Findings of this
study suggest that CSS is preparing students to have confidence in their audience awareness
skills. These skills, however, appear to be limited to certain contexts. For example, of the 122
domestic students who completed the survey, 38% (n=47) were either not at all or hardly
confident in making writing choices accessible to audiences from multiple language
backgrounds. In contrast, all six of the international students that responded to the survey

11
These findings are from the student perspective; in another study, it might be beneficial to
examine instructor’s perspectives on this same topic and compare results.
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indicated that they are either generally confident (n=5) or very confident (n=1) in making writing
choices accessible to audiences from multiple language backgrounds.
In response to a survey item asking students on a scale of 1 to 4, with 1 meaning they
strongly disagree and 4 meaning that they strongly agree, to rate the extent to which they agree
that writing instruction at CSS is helping them to learn how to analyze the expectations of a
particular audience and design their communications to meet those expectations, 68% agreed and
16% strongly agreed that the university was helping them to gain an understanding of audience.
In an open response opportunity in the survey related to students’ general degree of writing
skills, one student commented:
The concept of visualizing your audience was taught to our class very early on in
the course. Seeing as it will be the only writing course I'm required to complete
during my time here, it was great to start writing towards a predicted reader.
The one English major who was interviewed also recognized the value of audience awareness; in
fact, she stated that she measures her confidence in writing based on her ability to reach
particular audiences. She said, “How I’m able to easily change my style depending on the
audience, I’ve learned, is very big. Every message has an audience, and you always have to
cater to your message, whether it’s written or visual or whatever.” She added later in the
discussion that an advanced composition course she completed focused entirely on writing for a
public audience. She questioned, “What is a public audience? I had idea what that meant.” She
continued to explain that she had to do some research to learn what the instructor meant. She
concluded,
Even if there isn’t an explicit audience, there is one. Because when you logically
think about it, everything that you say, everything that you’re putting out there is
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going to be theoretically received by someone, and you have to anticipate or make
assumptions, smart assumptions, about you audience, to inform how you’re going
to write for them and how they will receive what your message is.
Such responses by survey and interview respondents suggest that CSS is preparing students to be
aware of varied audience expectations.
Another student during a focus group session also implied that she was aware that certain
writing conventions ought to be employed for certain audiences. While she didn’t say it in those
exact terms, her statement below would seem to suggest that she is aware that different readers
have different expectations. She said,
By having different writing instructors, you kind of have to figure out what their
preference is. Sometimes you don’t and sometimes you don’t, but I think by
learning about that will help me in my future. Just learning about how to
communicate with other people and learning about what they want and how to
cater whatever I’m writing towards them, even though I don't like that now
because it means I get a poor grade, because I don’t know what they want, I do
think that that skills probably will help me in the future.
This student’s comment about catering writing choices towards certain readers confirmed what
other students stated, that they are aware of how different audiences influence one’s
communicative practices.
The finding about audience awareness was confirmed during classroom observations of
the GE Communication Area A3 class, English 149: Technical Writing for Engineers. During
the observed session, students were presenting “how-to” projects, which included a video, script,
and presentation about rhetorical choices. The first group presented on how to tie-dye. All
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group members were wearing tie-dye shirts for their presentation. They began with background
information including why they selected the topic they did and the intended audience for the
video. They then showed the video, which provided step-by-step lesson on how to tie-dye a t-
shirt. After the video, group members explained the reasons behind their rhetorical choices and
how they believed those choices were effective given their intended audience. The students
presented the following rhetorical choices: 1) the incorporation of a certain tone, including puns
and wordplay, because the tone goes a long way with the audience, which was orientation
program student leaders; 2) a pairing of audio and video so the audience can follow along while
completing the tasks; 3) room for modifications for instructions, such as recognizing the
troubleshooting and variations with rubber bands; 4) music choices that appeal to college-aged
kids; and 5) a visual emphasis, which showed every step rather than describing the step because
the visual would be easier to follow. The instructor observed that the puns and students’ delivery
of the puns added to the rhetoric—the presenters used clever language, such as using the terms
“hit the mark” when discussing the bulls eye tie-dye method and “music to your ears” when
referring to the accordion rectangle type of tie-dying. Students in the audience laughed at these
puns; it was evident the presenters were well aware of how to apply rhetorical strategies to reach
effectively their audience.
The second group that presented during the researcher’s classroom observation session
did so on how to deadlift at the CSS Recreation Center. Group members explained that they
were specifically catering their video to first-year students in an effort to make them more
comfortable when using the recreation center and the deadlift equipment in particular. As well,
the group intended to create the video for those interested in getting stronger. In comparison to
the previous group, this group’s audience appeared to be less specific. The group first explained
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that deadlifting is a power exercise individuals often complete along with squats and bench
presses that involves repeated lifting of a bar. For background information, the presenters
explained where the recreation center was located. They also explained safety elements
associated with the exercise since deadlifting is a high-risk workout, according to the presenters.
They explained that the video included information on safety equipment as well as proper
posture to help lifting and prevent injury. The group then showed the video. Afterward, they
explained their rhetorical choices as follows: 1) they focused on the equipment to familiarize
viewers with effective tools, show how to use them, and show that all pieces of equipment are
not necessary; 2) they spent time on warm-up activities since warm-ups prevent injuries and
optimize lifting and they wanted to emphasize their importance; 3) their selected camera angle
was important because if viewers didn’t see the exact angle they would not learn correct
form/technique; 4) they opted to show the directions to and from the gym since new students do
not know exactly where deadlifting occurs in the recreation center; and 5) their elected to
incorporate an informal tone with humorous elements to reach their audience. Again, based on
the details provided by the group, it was evident they were well aware of how rhetorical choices
would affect their audience.
Along with classroom observations, of the six writing assignments collected for analysis
from the eight observed classes, four accounted for audience in some form or another. One
assignment, for example, recommended the writer “analyze the rhetorical situation,” another that
students “tailor the argument to a specific audience,” and yet another had students “write an
argument for an audience that you know disagrees with you.” The Religions Studies 302 course
incorporated an entire section on audience in the writing guide in the syllabus. Labeled “Know
your target audience,” this section states,
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Students are often unsure about what knowledge they can take for granted and
what they need to define, explain, or argue. For introductory courses, it is
generally best to presume that your reader knows and accepts the information and
hypotheses about a particular religion that are offered in courses readings and
lectures. Remember, regardless of who reads the material it must be evident that
you know the meaning, relevant dates, and so forth of the terms you are using.
While you do not need to explicitly define every word, it must be clear from the
context that you understand the critical terms of your essay. For this assignment,
you can assume that I am familiar with the terminology critical for your essay as
well as the contexts of the sacred scriptures. You do not need to rehash
background information but rather focus on your argument.
This section on audience is interesting in that it recognizes audience as an important rhetorical
consideration, but does so specifically in the context of the course.
Such nuance was less apparent in the language included in the syllabus of the
Interdisciplinary Studies in Liberal Arts course: “your writing skills should translate well for any
situation for which you have been tasked with reading closely, interpreting accurately, and
substantiating your explanations with references to specific evidence from the text.” The note
assumes the writer has an awareness of audience and therefore can discern appropriately the
expectations of the audience of a particular rhetorical situation. Neither of the statements about
audience in the course syllabi offers direct procedural instruction to students about how to ensure
their skills translate for any situation or make evident the critical terms in their essay, and it is
quite possible that the lessons were expanded upon at some point during the term. Regardless,
an awareness of audience was incorporated into course materials.
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In contrast to the general statements in course syllabi, two courses, the first-year
composition courses observed, specifically accounted for audience awareness in their writing
assignments. In the English 133: Writing and Rhetoric for Multilingual Students assignment on
public rhetoric, students had three options: “write an argument directed towards an audience that
you know agrees with you; write an argument for an audience that you know disagrees with you;
or critique someone else’s argument based on its claim, support, and its use of pathetic, ethical,
and logical appeals.” And, in the English 134: Writing and Rhetoric course, one of the learning
objectives listed for Essay #3 was to “identify the ‘rhetorical situation’ by accounting for the
relationship between writer, reader, and text.” The latter did not specify an audience to the
extent that the former assignment did, but in both cases, the question of audience was directly
connected to a particular writing task rather than a comment in the syllabus.
Findings of this research project sought to validate to what extent the assumed knowledge
influences of multiple literacies, genre and discourse conventions, and audience awareness were
affecting students’ writing skills attainment. Collected data suggested that students encountered
opportunities to develop each of these knowledge influences, but more practice is warranted in
an effort to increase students’ skills and confidence levels.
Motivation Influences on Writing Skills Attainment
Regardless of whether CSS embedded into the curriculum opportunities for sustained
writing practice to help students develop their skills, literature suggested that students also
needed to be motivated to attain advanced levels of writing proficiency in order to meet the
institution’s stated learning outcome to communicate effectively upon graduation and beyond.
This study was designed in part to determine to what extent students’ motivation influenced their
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writing skills attainment with a particular focus on the value students place on writing, the beliefs
they hold about their abilities to improve their skills, and the goals they have for doing so.
Utility value. Literature suggested that the motivation to develop writing skills is
connected to the value students place on the act of writing to achieve certain purposes. To that
end, one survey item asked students to rate the level at which they see value in demonstrating
advanced writing proficiency in order to earn their diplomas. Of the 127 respondents, 71
students (56%) selected mostly valuable or highly valuable whereas 56 students (44%) saw
demonstrating advanced writing proficiency in order to earn their diplomas as either not at all,
only slightly, or somewhat valuable. The results of another survey item revealed that 88% of
respondents believed that it was important to be highly proficient in writing in order to be
successful in their intended profession. Ninety percent of survey respondents agreed or strongly
agreed that they viewed writing as a tool they would use to participate in the workforce upon
graduation, and 81% agreed or strongly agreed that they viewed writing as a tool they would use
to engage as a citizen upon graduation. Another survey item was designed to determine if
students believed that there were academic, personal, professional, and social consequences
associated with the attainment of advanced levels of writing proficiency. A total of 125 students
responded to the survey item. Figure C, below, reveals that students placed less concern on any
social consequences but agreed more strongly that they would face professional consequences
without advanced levels of writing competency.
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Figure C. Perceived Consequences Associated with Writing Skills
Survey results suggested that the majority of students understood how writing and writing
skills attainment influenced their lives, specifically their professional lives. Interview and focus
group responses presented similar evidence regarding the value students place on writing. Data
collected during interview and focus group discussions revealed that some students saw value in
advanced levels of writing skills while others were motivated to improve their writing skills only
if they understood how doing so would affect their professional goals. In response to a question
about the importance of being able to demonstrate an advanced level of writing skills, for
example, one of the three students interviewed said,
Writing leaves an impression on your recipient, and especially in an academic or
professional setting, I think you’ll always want to put your best foot forward in
whatever way that may be. If writing is one of those ways, then I think having
advanced writing skills is particularly important.
Another interviewee said, “Although I’m in engineering and you’d think, ‘Oh, you don’t need to
be a good writer,’ communication is key.” He continued to explain the negative effects of poorly
written instruction manuals and added, “Writing and communication are crucial in engineering,
and most people don’t realize it.” He stated,
69%
65%
83%
46%
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
Perceived Consequences
Associated with a Lack of Writing Skills
Percentage that agree or
strongly agree that they
will face certain
consequences if they do not
attain advanced levels of
writing proficiency
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Coming from an engineering student, it’s always like, “Why do I need to take
writing? That is not pertinent to my major. I need to be taking dynamics,
thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, not fool around with words.” But like I
previously described, writing is so crucial and most engineers don’t realize it. I
think that’s what makes me a really effective engineer, is being able to work in
the lab as well as be an outgoing person that likes sharing, sharing technical
content, and popularizing the science to people that might not have a technical
background and making it interesting and fun for those that might not understand
quantum theory.
Such comments revealed that some students saw value in attaining advanced levels of writing
proficiency.
Other students during focus group discussions commented that they were less motivated
to improve their writing unless doing so was directly related to their professional lives. One
student stated, “We would appreciate more practice in writing, but at the same time, we don’t
have as much motivating us to write unless it’s work or major-related.” She continued, “Without
being able to see the connection and how it will be helpful later on, it’s hard for us to find the
motivation to, let’s say, do more [to improve our writing skills].” Another student who
participated in a focus group discussion session concurred: “It’s not that we don’t care [about
writing], but when the major classes are so pressing, and it’s so competitive and everything, we
can only care so much unless we directly see how it serves us or how it relates.” Yet another
student during a focus group stated,
A huge motive for me is writing my résumé. That’s where I actually take it more
seriously because professionals actually look at it. Feedback from professionals is
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a lot different from professors […] because with employment, your personal
image matters a lot more than in the classroom setting.
Another student agreed: “It’s okay to make mistakes in classes, but we try much harder to avoid
making mistakes at work.” Student comments during interview and focus group sessions suggest
that they attach utility value on work-related writing skills, a finding in line with the literature.
Overall, the reviewed literature suggested that the value students place on writing skills
attainment influences their motivation to improve such skills. Classroom observations showed
mixed results in terms of utility value and writing—students were both engaged and disengaged
in classroom settings. Without follow-up discussions with students in those classes, it was
unclear if students’ lack of engagement was connected to the value they placed on their writing
education. There also was no way to determine the value students place on writing from
document analysis or institutional data. Survey responses, however, affirmed the importance
students place on writing, namely as it associated with their professional lives, and data collected
from interviews and focus group sessions validated this finding.
Self-efficacy. The literature suggested that students’ concept of self-efficacy would
influence their motivation to complete writing tasks and attain advanced levels of writing
proficiency; the research design of this study thus incorporated survey, interview, and focus
group questions related to students’ self-efficacy. Classroom observations also provided some
insight into this motivational influence.
Two survey questions intended to determine to what extent students’ levels of self-
efficacy influenced their writing skills attainment. The first gauged students’ level of confidence
in their writing skills, and 118 of 134 survey respondents (87%) agreed or strongly agreed that
they are confident in their current writing abilities. Eighty-six of those respondents added
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comments to explain their confidence, eight of which mentioned their ability to earn average or
good grades on writing assignments as attributing to the confidence they had in their writing
skills. Other comments included the following: “I love writing and I am good at it,” “I can
communicate my point,” “I have always had a passion for writing, and my writing submissions
have always been fairly successful in terms of grading systems,” “I believe that I can write both
comprehensively and concisely,” “I am pretty confident in how I write and how I want to get a
point across but I know I could use some work in making sure I don't use the same words
constantly or repeat myself,” “I feel I am a competent writer and can get my points across
through written word but I have much room for improvement,” “always room for improvement
but I feel pretty good,” “I believe that writing is my strongest (academic) asset,” “although I get
decent grades on written assignments, I don't enjoy them,” and “I think I can write pretty well
and don't need a whole lot of instruction on just writing.” One student explained her confidence
in writing skills this way:
I enjoy the freedom and ability to create using language. I have had feedback
over my life where I have been told my writing skills are stylistic and
recognizable, which makes me proud of my work and confident in my abilities to
write.
Such comments revealed that students use feelings like joy and passion as well as expectations
like getting their point across and earning good grades
12
in order to assess their writing abilities,
findings that confirmed the literature. Overall, survey results suggest that students at CSS have
confidence in their writing abilities, which led the researcher to believe self-efficacy does not
influence students’ motivation to attain advanced levels of writing proficiency.

12
Instructor feedback was a recurring theme during interview and focus group discussions and is
explored in further detail in a later section of this chapter.
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In addition to survey responses, one instance of classroom observation revealed insights
about students’ self-efficacy. In one of the lower-division writing-intensive class, English 145,
the GE Communication Area A3 class, students engaged in a 25-minute peer review session.
The fact that they did so might suggest that they have some level of self-efficacy about their
writing skills. In other words, they appeared to be confident in the feedback they were offering
to their classmates. During the peer review session, students were required to share their topics
and the purpose of their topics with peers, and the peers had to perform as the opposition when
reviewing the text (e.g., a peer would respond as a staunch meat eater if that peer was reviewing
the work of a student arguing for a vegan diet). The instructor required the students to handwrite
a response to the writer at the bottom of their document. First, the students exchanged papers
and read silently. About five minutes later, some students returned their peer’s paper and began
verbally sharing feedback. Other students returned their peer’s paper but did not discuss their
response. As per the instructor’s suggestion, once students had completed one round of peer
review, they then exchanged with another peer and engaged in the peer review process again.
The researcher overheard a couple of the students’ verbal comments to one another: one student
suggested that the writer “better organize” and explained that he had offered suggestions on ways
to re-word some of the document. Another student encouraged a writer to “bring in more
pathos.” While students did not engage in in-depth conversations about ways to improve their
works, the activity observed during this class session suggests students are confident enough in
their own writing skills to offer feedback to others.
According to the literature, not only do students need self-efficacy in order to attain
advanced levels of writing proficiency, but also students need to believe they have the agency to
seek assistance to improve their skills. Most survey participants, 89%, agreed or strongly agreed
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that writing support services were available on campus to help them improve their writing skills,
and 77% of survey respondents (n=96) agreed or strongly agreed that they were comfortable
seeking help on their writing. Still, that left 23% of survey respondents who either strongly
disagreed or disagreed that they were comfortable seeking help, and 9% of survey respondents
indicated that working with others to improve their writing skills was not at all valuable. Based
on survey results, then, help seeking was not universally embraced at CSS.
This study assumed help-seeking behavior was not embraced at CSS because students
wanted to avoid embarrassment or feared appearing like an imposter. One interviewee
confirmed this assumption. She explained the following about her comfort level with seeking
help to improve her writing:
It’s something that I wish I was, and I know that I have to just get over it, because
[…] the more people you talk to, the better informed you’ll be. I want to be able
to get to a place where I just get over myself. It’s like, “You need the help; just
let them.”
She continued, “It’s an image thing. It’s a pride thing. It’s just that I want to make sure that
everything looks polished, but I also understand that it’s the revision process.” She added that in
only one class, her technical communication class, did she share her writing with her peers
because the instructor of that class “understands that that’s just part of the writing process.”
Other comments during interview and focus group sessions suggested that help seeking was
connected more so to students’ understanding of the need to do so. That is, if high stakes were
not attached to completion of a task, students did not find it necessary to seek help even if they
thought they could benefit from it. One student during a focus group conversation explained it
this way: “If grades reflected your writing ability as well, if [instructors] take that into a factor, I
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think more students would actually go out of their way to go to the writing center.” Another
student who participated in that focus group discussion stated that she struggled when “trying to
detect [her] own problems or where [she] need to improve” her writing, yet she added that she
did not take advantage of writing support services because improving her writing abilities was
not a priority for her major.
Goal orientation. In an attempt to determine how motivation influences students’ ability
to demonstrate advanced levels of writing proficiency for degree attainment and post-degree
success, this study examined to what extent students place value on writing skills, believe they
can improve those skills, and set goals for doing so. Based on students’ comments during
interviews and focus group sessions, students were not guided to set goals associated with their
writing process or writing-related goals that might affect academic or professional outcomes.
During one of the two focus group discussion sessions, a student commented that it had “been a
while” since he was asked to reflect on his writing goals; he added that he had “not [set goals] in
any setting since freshman year.” Another student present at that focus group session concurred:
“I really doubt people are asking the big question of like, ‘For the year, do you have some
writing goals or reading goals?’” He added, “When [instructors] don’t really factor in your
grades with writing ability, students don’t care.” This student’s comments represent what the
literature referred to as mastery and performance goals, and this finding suggests that students at
CSS are neither encouraged to acquire advanced writing skills nor to demonstrate them. An
interviewee explained her experience with writing-related goal setting:
I have had a handful of professors do handouts at the beginning where they ask up
to state our goals for the term. For me, I’ve always included a writing goal. It’s
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never addressed again. I can’t remember having an opportunity at the end of the
term to address whether or not that goal was met.
Goal orientation seemed to be aligned with the culture of writing on campus, which is discussed
in further detail below.
This research project in part sought to examine the extent to which motivation influences
students’ writing skills development. Specifically, data revealed that students saw value in
writing skills mostly in relation to their professional success. They were confident in their
writing skills and indicated that they would seek help on improving their skills if they were led to
believe it would be worth it to do so. However, students had not been encouraged to set goals
for improving their writing skills. Data suggests students may develop their own motivations for
improving their skills, but it appears that CSS does not foster students’ motivation to attain
advanced levels of writing proficiency.
Organizational Influences on Writing and Writing Education
Scholarship suggests that the cultural models an organization projects and the
environment it fosters influence performance outcomes. In the case of CSS, this study sought to
examine the culture of writing on campus to determine to what extent the institution embeds
progressive writing opportunities across curricular contexts as a means toward helping students
achieve academic and post-degree success.
The culture of writing. Based on the literature, the researcher assumed that the culture
of writing would influence students’ performance, and collected data validated this assumption.
In particular, document analysis of course syllabi and academic degree program flowcharts
yielded interesting results in relation to the culture of writing. First, it wasn’t until spring of
2015, as a result of a senate task force examining students’ time to GWAR completion, that
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academic flowcharts specifically marked the GWAR as a degree requirement to fulfill in the
junior year. Prior to that, it was a small note at the bottom of the chart. The figure below (Figure
D) represents the total units of unspecified General Education courses the 64 majors at CSS are
required to complete. To be fair, degree program academic flowcharts and curriculum
documents do not indicate, by name or designation, whether a major or support course is writing-
intensive. As such, major program requirements were analyzed for the number of unspecified
GE units, particularly because all courses within the CSS General Education program are
required to include a writing component. Within the GE program, students will engage in at
least six writing-intensive courses—four at the lower-division, and two at the upper-division—in
which they will be expected to write at least 3,000 words with 50% of the grade based on
writing; all other GE courses require that 10% of a student’s grade be based on writing
13
. It is
safe to assume that those majors with higher numbers of unspecified GE units will have more
opportunities to complete writing-intensive courses during their time at the institution. As the
chart depicts, College of Engineering majors on the whole have fewer occasions to enroll in
writing-intensive course experiences; their required GE support courses are largely in Area B,
Science and Mathematics courses, which are not writing-intensive.

13
Majors in the College of Engineering are required to complete five writing-intensive general
education courses as opposed to the six required for all majors in all other colleges.
2
2
1
1
1
3
5
4
1
2
9
2
2
6
4
4
1
1
1
5
3
1
1
1
1
28-36 GE Units
40 GE Units
44 GE Units
48 GE Units
52 GE Units
56 GE Units
60 GE Units
64 GE Units
68 GE Units
72 GE Units
Number of Unspecified
General Education Units
CAED
CAFES
CENG
CLA
CSM
OCOB
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Figure D. Number of Unspecified General Education Required Units per College
Institutional data also confirmed this observation. Of the 7,786 students analyzed, 2,346
were majors within the College of Engineering. Of those engineering majors, 16% (n=368)
failed the upper-division writing proficiency exam as opposed to 12% of liberal arts majors
(n=138) who failed the exam and 12% of the science and mathematics majors (n=132) who
failed the exam. In all, failure rates on the writing proficiency exam were as follows: 17% of
students in the college of agriculture, 16% of engineering and architecture majors, 14% of
business students, and 12% of liberal arts and science and mathematics students. Considering
these figures in relation to the chart above, it appears to be the case that the students in colleges
that offer more unspecified GE courses in their degree program flowcharts (CLA and CSM) fare
better at upper-division writing whereas those colleges with fewer unspecified GE courses
(CENG, CAED, and CAFES) struggle at higher rates to demonstrate advanced levels of writing
proficiency.
Students’ responses during interviews and focus group sessions as well suggested that a
culture of writing on campus was either non-existent or not evident to students. This finding was
validated during the focus group discussion attended by the electrical engineering major that
stated, “I don’t think as a whole school, they don’t really care about your writing ability and
that’s sad to say.” He continued,
I’ve seen with my department, I don’t think the school takes it seriously enough.
They don’t encourage it. They don’t talk about it. It’s just there. […] They could
care less if your writing is good or bad. I get good grades on my writing for my
lab reports and stuff, but it’s just…I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of mistakes, too,
but there’s no real feedback.
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When asked if the students believed faculty and other campus leaders placed an importance on
helping students improve their writing skills, one student replied,
They try doing that, I guess, with the technical writing and the GWAR and
communications class, but those are three courses out of, what, 50 or 200 units
that you have to take. That’s minimal. They could always do more, but I don’t
think the school emphasizes a lot on writing.
Another student during the focus group said, “I don’t feel like the standard is high enough—you
just do the [writing] assignment, and then you pretty much pass the class.” He added,
I feel like the school should care more because when you get working, it’s not a
good feeling to be insecure about your writing. I feel like at that point it’s a little
bit too late to actually go back and reflect on your writing because you know time
is money once you’re out there.
Another student added,
It’s not that faculty don’t care, but the system itself, even though we have three to
five required writing classes, lower division to upper division, but that might still
not be enough practice to prep us for what we will need eventually.
Even the English major who participated in an interview stated that she wished “more attention
was paid to [writing]” in her classes. She continued to explain that even in her first-year
composition course, “there really wasn’t a lot of instruction,” and that writing does not “get as
much attention as it should in general.”
In relation to campus culture, the researcher assumed that the competitive, high-achieving
nature of the student population prevented them from seeking help to improve their writing
skills. The researcher also assumed that students’ fear of failure prevented them from adoption
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new writing strategies and taking risks in their writing. Findings suggest that students are not
opposed to taking advantage of support resources on campus but instead do not believe it is
necessary to seek help and improve their writing skills because the stakes are not high enough for
them to do so. A student during a focus group session explained,
I should find it important [to seek help and improve my writing skills] because
this is the professional world; it just sucks that at the school, it doesn’t really
encourage it…. In reality, it’s kind of hard to go out of your way to do this stuff.
As well, the risk-averse cultural model that prohibited students from exploring multiple
approaches to writing, according to the literature, did not appear to influence student behaviors
on campus. During an interview, one student admitted that during her first year on campus, she
was highly affected by failing grades, but she indicated that her approach had changed. She
stated,
It would have been so interesting to have asked me this question in my first year.
By now I have failed multiple times, and because of that, particularly with
writing, I’ve learned that it’s never you—the poor grade is just one grade that you
must isolate from yourself…. I think now I would try my best not to let those
feelings prevent me from trying a different way of approaching a writing
assignment.
A student during a focus group discussion concurred by stating that if he had an opportunity to
revise an assignment, he would do something completely different, especially if an instructor had
indicated that what he was doing was not working.
Based on the literature, the researcher assumed that students’ high-achieving expectations
and fear of failure would prevent them from seeking help and trying new writing strategies
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during their time on campus. Collected data suggested, instead, that students did not receive
enough feedback on their writing to understand what was not working and/or what other writing
strategies they might employ to improve their process or product. Findings indicated that the
lack of instructor feedback left students unsure how to apply alternative writing styles and
strategies and why it would matter if they did.
The value of instructor feedback. The researcher assumed, based on the literature, that
negative feedback from instructors would influence students’ motivation to attain advanced
levels of writing proficiency. Comments during interviews and focus group sessions suggested
that students rarely received negative feedback; the assumption therefore was not validated.
Instead, it was the lack of feedback that sent a strong message to students about the culture of
writing at CSS. While one student, the English major, indicated that she receives feedback on
almost all of her writing assignments, other student participants agreed that they do not receive a
lot of feedback on their writing and that there is a lack of importance placed on writing on
campus. The English major stated, “Almost all of my professors have either written something,
that annotated as they were reading, and they provide comments, either written or typed, at the
end, to explain the grade or what they thought.” Her comment disconfirms what others
indicated: that instructor feedback was minimal or lacking altogether. Several students who
commented on an open response question in the survey commented on the lack of instructor
feedback at CSS. One survey participant, for example, stated, “The professors that have graded
my writing skills provided minimal feedback.” In short, findings reveal that instructors are not
motivating their students to continue writing to them.
Student participants in both interview and focus group discussions agreed with the lack of
instructor feedback on writing. An interviewee who indicated that he had a writing assignment
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each week in his technical writing class added that his “professor hasn’t been that good at giving
our work back.” He added, “people are turning in their concept papers tonight, and we haven’t
had any feedback on our writing for the last month. That can be really tough. Like, hey, if you
can’t learn from your work, then you’ll struggle.” During one of the two focus group sessions,
one student indicated that he did not feel confident in his ability to write a good technical paper
at a college level because
I don’t really get a lot of feedback when it comes to writing a lab report, and I
don’t know if my writing is good or not. I don’t know if it’s at a college level
because the feedback I get, it’s not what I hope to learn from or it doesn’t make
me become a better writer. […] I get no feedback, so I’m just in this box where I
don’t know if my writing is okay.
He continued to explain that he earns “sufficient grades” on his lab reports but that his writing
“could always be improved,” and he doesn’t know where he stands.
At the other focus group discussion session, a student stated, “When it comes to writing a
paper or something, I expect feedback. When I don’t get feedback, it’s kind of like this work
doesn’t really matter.” He added, “I think feedback could be a lot better from them.” Another
student in the focus group explained,
It’s kind of hard for me to pinpoint my [writing] problems because I haven’t had
much experience with people giving me feedback, so I don’t really know where I
stand, where I lack. For someone to ask me, “What are your [writing] challenges,”
it’s kind of hard for me to give them a good picture because I haven’t had much
experience with people giving me feedback.
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The other student agreed: “In my experience my instructors didn’t give me a lot of feedback.
[…] They don’t comment on mistakes very much.” One of the focus group participants, an
international student, concurred. He stated, “One thing that I would like to point out is that many
comments on your essay is more gratifying that a few comments because I feel like the teacher
actually went through my work.” The female student in the group jumped in:
F: “Especially if you get a bad grade and then there’s like one comment.”
M: “Yeah.”
F: “That’s not helpful.”
M: “I feel like when that happens you just feel disappointed, that you put in so
much work for it and at the end he…”
F: “Didn’t care.”
M: “Exactly.”
Similarly, another student involved in that focus group session stated: “I haven’t gotten back a
lot of my work; I just get the grade. I would like to see why I got points taken off.” She
followed up by adding that she had only engaged in two English classes, the one in which she
was currently enrolled, and another she had completed the previous year. She explained, “I have
two English classes, one I’m in currently, and we haven’t written any essays, and one we wrote
one essay.” When the researcher clarified whether the student was doing any writing in any
other classes, the student replied, “Not that I get back.” She said,
I think mainly the comments are like about the content of what I’m writing. I
haven’t noticed a lot, or if there is writing I get back, it’s not from an English
class. It is focused more about the content, less on the actual writing.
Students’ distinction between feedback on the content of their writing and their writing
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itself was an interesting phenomenon the researcher observed during review of interview and
focus group discussion transcripts. Students distinguished between the content in their writing
and the writing itself, as if the two were distinguishable, as if for them there was no relationship
between their thoughts and the language they used to convey those thoughts. In his discussion of
style in composition and rhetoric, Butler (2008) explains, “Today, various language theories
have shown that many factors beyond language itself contribute to meaning, and as such the
form-content dichotomy does not hold the significance it once did” (p. 80). Indeed, college
students ought to be aware that the form of their communications extend from the stylistic
choices they employ at the sentence level to broader forms of discourse, and that these varied
forms are inextricable from content (Butler, 2008). One student appreciated the way his
instructor separated form from content when responding to the student’s texts. He said,
He doesn’t comment on the way I’m writing, but more on the content of what I’m
writing about. Sometimes it’s nice to see that he’s not pointing out the flaws in
how I’m writing but is more interested in my point of view, like my ideas
specifically.
Another student present during this focus group discussion agreed. She stated, “I also appreciate
that not all my teachers grade me—like, if it’s not a writing class, they are grading me on my
ideas and my opinions because that is more relatable to the class.” Students’ comments that
instructor feedback about the content of their writing is more important than feedback on the
form of their writing suggests that they are not making connections among their thoughts and the
genres and discourse conventions they might employ to convey those thoughts. Another student
said,
If grades were reflective of your writing ability, if [professors] take that into a
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factor, I think more students would actually go out of there [sic] way. […] They
don’t really take the time to look over your paper. […] When you don’t really
factor in your grades with writing ability, students don’t care. […] They don’t
take into factor your technical writing ability. It’s just, “Do you have the content?
Do you have the grasp we need?”
Based on comments made during interviews and focus group sessions, without adequate
feedback and intentional connections between thought and language in all contexts, students
struggle to see writing as a powerful social act employed for a variety of purposes.
The transfer of learning. Another important organizational influence the data revealed
that was not considered in the review of the literature is the use of writing and rhetoric as a
means for purposeful transfer of learning across students’ courses. This was particularly
noticeable when one of the GE Arts and Humanities Area C4 course instructors, the Religious
Studies professor, replied to the researcher’s request to observe his class as part of this research
project. His response was that he did not teach writing, but that if the researcher thought it
would be useful to observe, then he would be open to it. In an email in response to the
researcher’s request to observe, he stated,
Since you are interested in teaching writing, let me give you a bit of background
on the writing in RELS 302. They have three written assignments (plus essay
exams) but the primary writing exercise is a pair of papers arguing opposite
positions from the same sacred text—either the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, or
the Quran. I've vacillated between having them write on the place of women in
the scriptures and the place of violence in the scriptures. I've enclosed here the
syllabus that describes the assignment, the lengthy guide to writing it, and the
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grading rubric (which is linked to the writing guide). Hope that provides a bit of
background.
Such a response was curious since a C4 GE course is designed to be writing-intensive, but the
distinction between a writing course and a writing-intensive course is important to consider. The
lecture was captivating, largely because the instructor had indicated that he wouldn't talk about
writing when in fact the entire discussion about interpreting/understanding the Qur'an revolved
around language, narrative structure, the difference between written and oral communication,
and the ways readers analyze rhetorical strategies. There were several times the researcher
wanted to join in the conversation and remind students that they learned those concepts in their
GE Communication Area A1 and A3 classes to help them experience that transfer of learning.
Such an urge was not assuming students were not learning in the course, but was because they
were totally engaged and the researcher wanted to help them make writing-related connections
among their classroom experiences.
The professor was teaching important rhetorical concepts in the context of the Qur’an and
was neither connecting that knowledge to the writing-intensive designation of the course nor
making transparent for students how knowledge of those concepts transferred among a variety of
situations. As an example, the class lecture began with a presentation on the troubles with the
Qur’an, and the professor explained that there are a number of grammatically incorrect
components of the text. He suggested that some argue such errors represent a sign of divinity:
“If someone was trying to pull one over on humanity, they wouldn’t do it this way.” This struck
the observer as a place where the rhetorical concept of ethos, a concept students learned in both
their GE Communication Area A1 and A3 classes, could have been referenced.
The instructor further used the rhetorical appeals of ethos, logos, and pathos as he moved
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on to discuss how the Qur’an has been interpreted. He also indicated early on in the class
session, “ways to interpret the Qur’an require contextual understanding.” Again, this struck the
researcher as a missed opportunity—one during which the professor could have referenced
students’ understanding that the analysis of any rhetorical situation involves an understanding of
the audience, purpose, and context of the situation. Specifically, about an hour and a half into
the class session, the professor explained to students that when determining whether the 600,000
or more hadiths about the Qur’an are reliable, they must consider that “the quality of the person
passing on information is important to determining the credibility of the source.” He continued
to explain to students that there must be “a believable line of transmission” and that the
information presented should fit with what they know about Muhammad. Such an analysis is
similar to the work students do in their lower-division writing-intensive classes, not only using
the rhetorical appeals but also students’ information literacy skills when determining the
credibility of a source. Making more transparent for students the applicability of their
knowledge base from one context to another may have helped cement for students the value of
the rhetorical knowledge and critical literacy skills they acquire during lower-division writing-
intensive classes.
This finding aligns with the work of Adler-Kassner, Majewski, and Koshnick (2012),
who examined the ways in which threshold concepts in two GE courses at the University of
California, Santa Barbara, a writing course and a history class, were similar. They state, “Both
courses stress the centrality of audience, purpose, and context in production of genres, and in the
ways that those genres are used and interpreted by various audiences” (Adler-Kassner et al.,
2012). Adler-Kassner et al. (2012) go on to remind readers that one misperception of writing
skills is that they are generic. They cite the work of Anne Beaufort (2007), who importantly
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warns that such a “misappropriation of principles” results in a “negative transfer of learning” (p.
10). Instead, Adler-Kassner et al. (2012) encourage instructors to make explicit for students how
writing and rhetorical concepts relate to and are distinct within specific disciplines. In the case
of this research project, the Religious Studies professor could have reiterated what students
learned in their lower-division, writing-intensive GE courses and emphasized how that prior
knowledge could be applied effectively in the context of his course. While the responsibility to
make transparent the transfer of multiple literacies among genres and discourse communities
does not rest solely on GE professors, this observed class session was a missed opportunity to
connect concepts of writing and rhetoric across the curriculum.
Reflection as a tool for the transfer of learning. Based on the findings in this study,
reflection is neither used as a tool for the transfer of learning by instructors nor employed by
students. Of the 131 students who responded to the survey item asking them to rate how often
they had been assigned self-reflection exercises, such as a writer’s memo that explains the
processes and choices they made when completing a writing project in their classes, 40% (n=53)
indicated they never or rarely had been assigned self-reflection exercises. This finding was
confirmed during interviews and focus group sessions. The English major indicated that her
technical writing professor required reflections with every assignment, and while she explained
that she has now learned to value reflection, before her experiences in the technical writing
classes, she neither used reflection as a learning tool nor saw value in doing so. She mused,
Do you ever really give yourself enough time to reflect on yourself, or your day,
or your time? When you think about that fact that many of us probably don’t, to
relate that back to writing, we don’t allow ourselves time to reflect on what was
difficult about an assignment. Or, what came easier, and why? I think
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[reflections] are extremely helpful. And I don’t think that I ever would have
thought to do it because maybe it would be ‘More writing? I just did it. I was
done with the assignment; I didn’t want to have to think about it, particularly if it
hadn’t gone well or if I didn’t think it went well, which is kind of a lot of the time.
During a focus group session, another student expressed a similar sentiment about reflective
practices, particularly because, as he explained, he was not required to engage in them: “To
reflect on your paper again is kind of like walking backwards. No one wants to look over what
they did after they just finished it. If someone asked me to reflect without any incentive, I’d just
look it over and give some BS.” The other student present during that focus group session
agreed: “We’re bad at detecting how to reflect on ourselves unless there is a motive. I don’t feel
like I learn that much from doing reflection, and I don’t even know how to do reflections.” The
other student chimed in, “People see it as busy work—not as a tool to be better. If you actually
come up with a good motive for us to do it, I think you’re going to have great writers on this
campus.” One of the two other students added, “I feel like I would appreciate more guidelines
on how to do reflections.” One of the interviewees admitted he had never thought about using
reflection as a tool for learning. He said,
I never thought about, hey do I reflect on… No, honestly, I don’t think I do
reflect. I think I’m just like, “hey, I don’t have time to reflect on how I did on that
concept paper. I’ve got a dynamics thing I gotta study for because my exam is on
Monday.” So I feel like I’m just so…complete this deadline, complete that
deadline, and I don’t really get to sit down and have time to think about that. […]
I need to start doing that more. During that process of reflection, it will make you
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feel a certain way about how you performed. We don’t always remember what
we did, but we will always remember how we felt doing it.
He went on to reiterate that he had never heard about reflection before the interview, but that he
wished he had. He recommended that instructors make reflection an optional component of an
assignment, and then he quickly added, “Well, optional, no one would ever do it.” Later he
repeated his interest in engaging in reflective practices and said, “I feel like that needs to get
incorporated a little bit more.” Student responses to interview and focus group discussions
suggest they crave more reflective opportunities, and classroom observations confirm that
instructors are not regularly offering students occasions for such. Not one minute in any class
was dedicated to reflection.
Conclusion
The descriptive material and triangulated findings from surveys, interviews, focus group
sessions, classroom observations, institutional documents and data provide evidence to support
the claim that in the absence of an organizational culture that values writing as a tool for
academic, professional, and civic engagement, students have neither sufficient opportunities to
develop communication skills and strategies across contexts nor the motivation to do so.
Collected data identified gaps in writing and writing education, particularly in regards to
instruction, feedback, reflection and the transfer of learning. With a more purposefully designed
writing-enriched curriculum and intentional transfer of skills across the curriculum, CSS could
better support learning and increase degree attainment for all students.
While this study sought to identify gaps in the institution’s writing program overall in an
effort to improve it, thereby positively affecting students’ degree attainment, this research project
specifically examined the assumed relationship between college readiness and degree attainment
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in an effort to gain clarity in how under-preparation affects graduation rates. The literature
shows that literacy skills are an eminent barrier to student success, and results from the ad hoc
data report confirmed that finding. The data report revealed that underprepared students earned
lower grade point averages and struggled to fulfill the university’s graduation writing
requirement (GWAR) at a rate of over double their college-ready peers. Because CSS students
cannot earn a degree without GWAR completion, their struggles to fulfill the requirement imply
that under-preparedness in English prolongs degree attainment. It may also affect employment
post degree, especially in competitive industries where students’ grade point averages influence
interview opportunities. Under-prepared students need sustained writing practice and support
throughout their degree programs—not just during the first year. A shift in the institution’s
culture toward a writing-enriched curriculum could ensure that under-prepared students continue
to develop their skills at all class levels thereby better preparing them for GWAR completion and
degree attainment. Chapter Five offers recommendations for CSS based on the results and
findings presented here.

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CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Discussion
There are three contexts under which CSS students are expected to demonstrate advanced
levels of written communication: accreditation from the Western Association of Schools and
College is designed around students’ performance of five core competencies, including written
communication; systemwide mandates require students to demonstrate upper-division writing
proficiency levels before graduation; and one of the university’s learning outcomes is effective
communication. Given that students’ writing skills feature prominently among standards that
validate the institution’s educational quality, it is imperative that CSS address how well its
curriculum supports students’ writing and writing education.
As a member of the field of writing studies and an employee at CSS, the researcher of
this study wanted to learn from students to what extent the university was supporting them in
their efforts to improve their writing skills across all levels. The purpose of this research project
was not to highlight the ways in which the institution’s writing curriculum is ineffective; yet the
findings bring to light important gaps in the university’s teaching and learning practices. Based
on collected data, students do realize that multiple literacy skills are important—they have
received and internalized that message. They also want the university to provide them more
opportunities to grow as communicators. It is the institution’s responsibility, then, to be more
mindful not only of how well students succeed in their first-year composition courses but also
how well students continue to apply and develop the skills they learned in those courses to other
courses across all levels of their college experience. This is an opportunity to improve the ways
the institution educates its college writers. Students want more writing practice throughout their
time on campus, they want feedback on the writing they complete so they can better understand
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how and what skills and strategies need to be developed, and they want to know how the work
they are doing aligns with their major programs of study and professional goals post degree. It is
up to the CSS to implement a writing program that accomplishes these objectives.
Recommendations
Based on findings from survey, interview, and focus group responses coupled with those
from classroom observations, document analysis, and institutional data, CSS ought to develop an
improvement plan centered on using writing and writing education to meet performance goals.
Knowledge Recommendations
As collected data validated and literature supported, knowledge of multiple literacies,
genre and discourse conventions, and audience awareness influence students’ writing skills
development. This section describes recommendations for developing students’ writing
proficiency levels aligned with those knowledge influences so that students may have the skills
needed to succeed in their senior projects, graduate on time, and gain employment post
graduation. Particularly, the researcher suggests the adoption of a writing-enriched curriculum
across general education and in the disciplines, one infused with sustained writing practice at all
levels of the college experience, sufficient and purposeful instructor feedback to student writing,
an overt expression of the learning transfer that takes places among courses, and a stronger
message that writing is prominent as consequential to post-degree success.
Multiple literacies recommendations. Literacies comprise ways of knowing and
communicating, and based on the scholarship cited in the review of literature alone, it is clear
that institutions of higher education (IHE) must change the 20
th
century curriculum to mirror 21
st

century workforce and civic needs. In response to evolving technologies and with an eye toward
arming students with the critical skills needed to analyze the production of knowledge and
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participate in meaning making within rapidly changing contexts, the literature showed that
writing programs must foster a pedagogy of multiple literacies, one that invites students to adapt
to shifts in technology and diverse language practices (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009; Hewins-
Maroney & Williams, 2013; Horner et al., 2014; Kalantzis et al., 2016; New London Group,
1996; Yancey, 2009). Students must have ample opportunities to engage in epistemic practices
of the 21
st
century—with new types of texts and in new ways of communicating. It is therefore
recommended that CSS more intentionally embed diverse voices and emergent technologies into
its GE and discipline-specific programs.
In their ongoing commitment to multiliteracy, original members of the New London
Group Cope and Kalantzis (2015) frame the process of knowledge and meaning making through
four acts: experiencing, conceptualizing, analyzing, and applying. The authors recommend
weaving together familiar and unfamiliar texts to foster students’ experiencing of knowledge in a
variety of contexts. They also recommend that instructors incorporate discipline-specific
terminology and help students develop the meta-language of their fields so that they are skilled
in conceptualizing ideas as they shift from theorizing to practicing (Cope & Kalantzis, 2015).
For Cope and Kalantzis (2015) this requires overt instruction and critical analysis. When
students engage in analyzing, according to Cope and Kalantzis (2015), they should be
questioning how a text functions and “critically interrogating the interests of participants in the
communication process” (p. 4). Finally, a pedagogy of multiliteracies incorporates the creation
and sharing of one’s own texts, or, as they put it, applying “knowledge and understandings to the
complex diversity of real-word situations” (p.4).
When adopting a pedagogy of multiliteracy, teaching and learning becomes less focused
on what students know and more on what they do with that knowledge, using multiple modes to
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convey one’s thoughts and weaving those thoughts across contexts (Cope & Kalantzis, 2015).
To that end, course and program curricular design ought to include a range of multiliteracy
activities sequenced effectively. Students should have ample opportunities to consider a variety
of texts and practices using “logical reasoning, tracing cause and effect, inferring, and
predicting” (Cope & Kalantzis, 2015, p. 27). Furthermore, lessons learned in one activity should
be applied in another circumstance so students have experience with appropriately and creatively
applying their knowledge in different situations. It is therefore appropriate to recommend that
CSS develop and implement a faculty training program to assist instructors in more intentionally
embedding diverse voices, emergent technologies, and varied ways of knowing into its GE and
discipline-specific programs. Doing so will result in meaningful, 21
st
century learning
opportunities for students to practice and transfer writing knowledge and skills within and among
courses scaffolded throughout their college experience (Clark & Estes, 2008; Kirkpatrick &
Kirkpatrick, 2016; Rueda, 2011).
Genre and discourse conventions recommendations. Students need to know how and
when to incorporate writing strategies appropriate for a variety of rhetorical situations.
Procedural knowledge of writing, the knowledge of “subject-specific techniques and methods,”
as well as the understanding of when to employ those methods appropriately, increases when
declarative knowledge is known (Clark & Estes, 2008; Krathwohl, 2002, p. 214). In order to
develop such procedural knowledge, students need deliberate, sustained writing practice (Clark
& Estes, 2008; Rueda, 2011). It is therefore recommended that the institution design and
implement a faculty training program so that faculty develop step-by-step abilities to 1) convey
effectively to students both general and discipline-specific writing techniques and methods, 2)
employs language difference and multiple modes of delivery appropriate for different rhetorical
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situations, and 3) incorporates ample opportunities for deliberate, sustained writing practice
(Clark & Estes, 2008; Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016; Rueda, 2011).
In his exploration of how writers move from novice to expert, Carter (1990) asserts that
once a writer has internalized general writing strategies, those strategies can become more and
more localized, given specific contexts. According to Carter (1990), this is the shift from
declarative to procedural knowledge, when the writer has compiled enough knowledge to move
beyond a generalist approach to communicating to one that relies on a specialist’s understanding
of a given context. In short, Carter (1990) states, “a full understanding of the complex nature of
writing demands both general and local knowledge” (p. 285). It is appropriate, then, that faculty
develop their step-by-step abilities to convey effectively to students both general and discipline-
specific writing techniques and methods. Faculty, too, must incorporate opportunities
throughout the curriculum for students to engage in deliberate, sustained writing practice during
which students employ a variety of writing strategies for a variety of purposes (Clark & Estes,
2008; Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016; Rueda, 2011).
Undergraduate students at CSS need knowledge of genre and discourse conventions in
order to demonstrate upper-division writing proficiency in general education (GE) and major-
specific courses. Readiness for writing success in college requires that students have transitional
skills, cognitive strategies, and content knowledge, including discipline-specific terminology and
other details that students must know in order to solve problems related to their majors (Conley,
2013; Krathwohl, 2002; Rueda, 2011). McCutchen (2011) suggests that when writers have a
large amount of writing experiences stored in their long-term memory, they can access those
strategies to demonstrate advanced writing proficiency in a variety of contexts. This would
suggest that the university’s curriculum should be designed to provide students with
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opportunities segmented and scaffolded throughout their college experience to learn, practice,
and transfer such knowledge within and among their courses (Clark & Estes, 2008; Rueda,
2011). Doing so effectively would also require that the university develop and implement a
faculty training program so that faculty develop their abilities 1) to help students categorize and
understand upper-level general and discipline-specific writing conventions, 2) to incorporate
rhetorical and discipline-specific terminology, and 3) to make transparent to students a range of
approaches to inquiry and organization of ideas (Clark & Estes, 2008; Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick,
2016; Rueda, 2011).
Audience awareness recommendations. According to the literature, students need to
know how to reflect on their rhetorical choices and how those choices affect their intended
audience. When students employ metacognitive strategies to consider how their communicative
choices are affecting their audiences, their learning improves; thus, it is imperative that educators
foster students’ writing-related metacognitive development at all levels and all contexts (Baker,
2006). Metacognitive activities are particularly important for the writing classroom because they
help writers better understand their writing processes and how to improve upon those processes
for different audiences, purposes, and contexts (VanKooten, 2016). As well, instructors should
design assignments in which students are expected to engage in self-reflective practices and
share their reflections with one another so that they may build upon their skills (Rueda, 2011).
CSS therefore would do well to deliver one or more lessons during which students receive
models of effective self-reflective practices to help them identify their rhetorical choices and
engage in meaningful reflection of those choices (Rueda, 2011).
Bardine and Fulton (2008) report on their use of reflective revision memos in their
respective composition classrooms. Each instructor analyzed memos their students submitted
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throughout the entire semester and present examples to highlight the ways in which students’
knowledge and skills improved over the time of the course. Key to their findings is that revision
memos alone will not improve student writing; students must receive proper instruction on how
to do so and must have multiple opportunities to engage in such practices because their
metacognitive skills develop over time (Bardine & Fulton, 2008). Bardine and Fulton (2008)
affirm that assigning reflective revision memos help students move through the “detection and
diagnosis” of “critical problem areas” in their texts (p. 152). They state, “the earlier student
writers begin reflecting on their writing, the easier it will be for them to view their papers
objectively and revise more effectively” (p. 153). The recommendation to model metacognitive
practices and assign self-reflective tasks is effective because doing so helps students draw upon
their prior knowledge and develop their own methods for analyzing rhetorical situations thereby
attaining higher levels of writing proficiency as they move through and beyond their college
careers. Given that collected data from this study revealed that students do not regularly engage
in reflection, CSS ought to incorporate metacognitive practices across the curriculum.
Motivation Recommendations
As all students progress toward degree attainment, their motivation to attain advanced
levels of writing proficiency may influence their ability to do so. While there are a variety of
theories of motivation, three relevant to this study are the expectancy value motivation theory
(Eccles, 2006), efficacy theory (Bandura, 2000, 2005), and goal orientation theory (Yough &
Anderman, 2006). In the context of this study, when students understand the value of writing
skills, particularly as those skills influence their professional success, they are more likely to set
goals for writing mastery and seek help as they work toward achieving those goals. The findings
of this study have validated these motivational influences as affecting stakeholders’ abilities to
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achieve performance goals as outlined by the GI 2025.
Utility value motivation recommendations. Students need to perceive the development
and demonstration of advanced writing proficiency as useful. Research shows that students
place value on tasks in which they have a personal interest, and high levels of personal and/or
situational interest relate to high levels of student achievement (Pintrich, 2003; Schraw &
Lehman, 2009; Wigfield & Cambria, 2010). Students’ determination of value is also influenced
by the costs (i.e. time and energy) associated with achieving a particular goal or completing a
particular task (Eccles, 2006). Such findings suggest that instructors can generate student
interest in assigned writing tasks by highlighting the tasks’ importance to their personal and
professional futures (Schraw & Lehman, 2009). Doing so will help students perceive value in
the tasks higher than they perceive the costs of completing the tasks. Furthermore, the
organization’s writing curriculum should invite students to explore the ways in which
professionals in their chosen fields write and how rhetorical choices affect communication in
those workplaces, which may help situate written communication specifically within one’s
profession and encourage students to see the value in exerting time and energy to improve
writing skills for professional success post degree (Bollig, 2015).
The effort required to improve one’s writing is perhaps much more than students
anticipate, and encouragement from instructors, peers, family members, and prospective
employers plays an important role in students’ perceptions of the usefulness of sustained writing
practice. Rodby (1999) offers real-world evidence of how students place value on writing skills
as they are related to their careers. She presents an extensive case study of two first generation
college students to determine what influences their motivation to improve their writing skills.
Rodby (1999) states,
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Luciana’s belief that good grades in writing classes would ensure economic
success after graduation was part of her home life, part of her classmates’ beliefs,
part of the atmosphere at her work-study job at retention services, and part of the
clubs such as Latinx Leadership that she had belonged to in high school. (Rodby,
1999, p. 51)
Based on the results of her study, Rodby (1999) concludes that a number of factors influence
students’ motivation to improve their writing skills, but that if their family, friends, and
professional aspirations advocate for advanced writing skills, students are more inclined to put
the time and effort into sustained writing practice. This study is but one example that highlights
how students’ understanding of the connection between writing skills and professional success
may increase their motivation to persist at developing advanced levels of writing proficiency
during college.
Self-efficacy motivation recommendations. Students need to believe they are capable
of achieving advanced levels of writing proficiency, and they also need agency to seek writing
support when needed. Pintrich (2003) found that students who believe they can achieve their
learning goals have self-efficacy and are motivated to put in the effort and persist to achieve their
goals. Self-efficacy, then, is increased as individuals succeed in a task (Bandura, 2005).
Furthermore, one’s sense of agency influences one’s concept of self-efficacy and plays a role in
how an individual is motivated, or lacks motivation, to complete such tasks (Bandura, 2000).
The literature suggests that because instructors’ responses to student writing and students’ finals
grades often elicit negative emotional responses and because students’ emotions affect their
writing skill improvement, teachers should work to build students’ confidence to increase self-
efficacy (Pajares, 2003). In order to address gaps in students’ self-efficacy and sense of agency,
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the organization should design job aides for faculty to increase their skills in effective
assignment design and response to student writing. Instructors then will design course activities
in which they break large tasks into smaller ones and provide students clear expectations/goals
for each task. As well, the organization will better encourage students to seek assistance on
writing tasks in order to achieve their writing goals.
Building upon the work of Pajares (2003), who published an extensive literature review
of how motivational influences affect students’ writing skills development, Williams and Takaku
(2011) had 671 students, including international students, complete a self-efficacy belief scale
over an 8-year period, in addition to other writing tests, in an attempt to identify motivational
issues related to how students perceive their writing skills and whether those perceptions
influence their choice to seek help on their writing. The results of their study indicate that while
the results of other studies have shown that students with low self-efficacy may not seek help on
their writing, the multilingual students in their study with low levels of self-efficacy were more
inclined to seek help on their writing. In all, the study concludes that those who seek help on
their writing improve their writing skills (Williams & Takaku, 2011). Student participants in this
study did not reveal low self-efficacy or an unwillingness to seek help on their writing, but the
motivation to improve one’s skills did appear to be related to their goals for doing so. Faculty
therefore would do well to make clearer to students the value in mastering and performing
advanced writing skills.
Goal orientation motivation recommendations. Students need to set performance and
mastery goals that drive them to persist at attaining advanced levels of writing proficiency.
Yough and Anderman (2006) define a performance goal as a goal students set when their
performance is in comparison to that of their peers, and a mastery goal as one students set when
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they intend to master a certain task. Research suggests that students succeed when they are
guided first to set goals associated with their writing process; outcome-related goals can be
effective once a writer reaches automaticity of writing strategies (Zimmerman & Kitsantas,
1999). In all, goals influence learning, and the achievement of goals, or lack thereof, can affect a
student’s emotions (Pekrun, 2011; Pintrich, 2003). When grades enter the mix, students may
suffer from performance avoidance (Pekrun, 2011; Pintrich, 2003; Yough & Anderman, 2006).
Specifically, an instructor’s expectations for goal achievement can lead to negative emotions,
which may affect a student’s motivation to meet the goal (Pekrun, 2011). Faculty will be
encouraged to design writing-intensive assignments/courses in which students are invited to set
writing-related mastery and performance goals; job aides and training will be provided to help
faculty achieve these outcomes. Instructors will be encouraged to incorporate grading contracts
into their course design to increase student motivation—grading contracts help clarify tasks and
assignment goals and offer students a role in establishing an assignment’s expectations thereby
increasing student agency (Danielewicz & Elbow, 2009).
The grading contract strategy proposed by Danielewicz and Elbow (2009) serves as an
alternative extrinsic motivation influence for students. If students are less focused on how their
performance affects their grades, the contract may intrinsically motivate students to attain
writing goals (Danielewicz & Elbow, 2009). Inoue (2012) studied how grading contracts
motivated basic writers from diverse backgrounds at Fresno State to perform tasks. In particular,
he surveyed over 400 Asian Pacific Islander, African American, and white students, examined
their final writing portfolios, and collected final course grades. He concluded that grading
contracts were particularly motivating for who tend to view grades as harmful or destructive to
their academic success, and while he advocates for grading contracts as a viable strategy for
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motivating students, his research reminds us that no one approach to increasing student
motivation will work for all students. In essence, grading contracts is a recommended
intervention that may support students’ performance goals in the writing classroom because they
may help to mitigate students’ negative associations with final grades on writing assignments.
While the literature provides a number of recommendations for increasing the value
students place on the development of their writing skills, their self-efficacy when doing so, and
the motivation to set their own writing goals, unless faculty increase the feedback they offer
students, students will not improve their writing skills. As Rysdam and Johnson-Shull (2015-
2016) aptly argued in their article about improving instructor responses to student writing,
Unless we are willing to admit, as a profession, that this habituated style of
response is a problem that warrants our focused attentions, students will continue
to suffer the indignities and inadequacies of unconsciously crafter or reflexively
habituated writing responses from teachers, and they will continue to struggle to
learn to write well (p. 76).
Neither students nor the organization will achieve its performance goals unless faculty commit to
more meaningful feedback and administrators commit to a writing-enriched curriculum that
transforms the culture of writing on campus.
Organizational Recommendations
As Clark and Estes (2008) note, it is particularly important to understand the cultural
values of an organization; thus, for the purposes of this study, the cultural values associated with
writing and writing education on campus and the ways in which the institution communicates
those values have been explored. Indeed, student achievement in writing (or lack thereof) is
influenced by the cultural model of the organization, one in which writing is not embedded into
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the school’s STEM identity. Without an organizational commitment to students’ writing skills
attainment, resources are not adequately allocated to writing instruction on campus. Clark and
Estes (2008) emphasize that the allocation of resources influences the achievement of goals.
Kezar (2001) agrees: IHEs are dependent upon resources to thrive, and thus any attempt to
address performance gaps must examine how resources are distributed. In the case of supporting
writing and writing instruction on campus, resources include professional development for
instructors to build an understanding of teaching and responding to writing in the disciplines, the
capacity to offer smaller class sizes, and funding to hire more writing experts who can enhance
the writing culture by offering additional writing courses and growing support programs for both
instructors and students.
While it is important to examine the campus culture in relation to writing and writing
education, labeling a culture as effective or ineffective depends not only on the culture itself but
also on the environment in which that culture operates (Schein, 2004). In addition to the
organization’s established culture of writing and how the allocation of resources reflects upon
the value the institution places on that culture, the institution’s cultural settings influence
students’ writing achievement. In particular, the institution’s cultural settings (i.e., classrooms)
must align with best practices in writing education, in which students are offered low-stakes
writing opportunities to take risks, fail, gain feedback, reflect, revise, learn, and transfer their
skills to new contexts (Gallimore & Goldenberg, 2001).
Recommendations to improve the campus culture of writing. Even though students’
demonstration of advanced writing skills is a degree requirement established by the Chancellor’s
Office Board of Trustees, a culture of writing has not been embedded into the school’s identity.
Because advanced writing skills development is not a commitment of the organization, resources
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are not adequately allocated to develop best practices in writing across the curriculum. As Clark
and Estes (2008) suggest, organizational performance increases when processes and resources
are aligned with goals established collaboratively, and Agócs (1997) points out that goals will
not be met unless the committee who is responsible for implementing change has power and/or
resources to follow through with the responsibility. As such, upper administration and academic
senate members at CSS will appoint a universitywide writing committee to evaluate the current
upper-division writing curriculum, establish goals and timeframes, and allocate resources to
improve students’ writing education.
The need to change the culture on a college campus is not unique to CSS. Thomas
(2009) articulates the organizational efforts at Virginia State University to develop a culture of
writing on campus. The institution’s effort was a research-based attempt to increase student
success. Beginning with a Quality Enhancement Plan as required by their accrediting body, a
university task force was formed to redesign the writing program and enhance teaching and
learning on campus. The task force first defined what they believed a “culture of writing” on
campus would entail and then collaboratively established goals for the new program, harnessing
the QEP process to shift the campus culture (Thomas, 2009). Students would meet performance
and mastery goals throughout all levels on campus, and program assessment would be conducted
via analysis of student’s senior-year e-portfolios. Resources were allocated to help instructors
develop in the teaching of writing in their disciplines, and student support came by way of a
newly created writing studio. Based on research and experience, Thomas (2009) states that a
culture of writing must include a university-wide shared and demonstrated commitment to
writing and writing education along with the funding, resources, and faculty support services to
sustain the effort.
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Indeed, a shift in the organizational culture of writing must be a universitywide effort,
and that effort must address students’ and instructors’ shared beliefs and values about writing
(cultural models) as well as the environment in which they enact those beliefs and values
(cultural settings). Traditionally, writing instructors expected error-free prose and assigned
grades accordingly; thus, often a culture of has not been cultivated in the classroom. Further,
identifying and making visible one’s writing weaknesses may go against students’ belief that
error/failure is bad. Such influences are both a cultural model students inherit as they progress
through their educational experiences and a cultural setting perpetuated at the university. Kezar
(2001) suggests that members of an organization need to feel safe to take risks, and the
organizational environment must cultivate a culture of risk, and in the case of writing on campus,
students must feel safe to take risks as they work toward improving their writing skills. In an
effort to meet institutional writing performance and mastery goals, students on campus must be
invited to adopt new mental models about failure and learning, models that go beyond what they
may have inherited throughout their twelve or more years of education (Kezar, 2001).
Instructors, too, must realize that students’ apparent failures may be in part due to culture and
language difference rather than deficit (Gallimore & Goldenberg, 2001). While the findings of
this study disconfirmed students’ reluctance toward risk-taking, it was evident that students
found little need to do so because they were led to believe that trying new writing strategies and
improving their skills was not necessary for degree attainment or success post-degree. They
concluded, based on their instructors’ lack of feedback on their writing, that writing skills were
not as important as their specialized knowledge. It is recommended, then, that instructors will be
offered training aids in order best to respond to student writing, which will provide students with
respectful, formative feedback throughout their learning processes, especially as they struggle to
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embrace new concepts and communicate in new contexts. The training aid might incorporate the
idea of reframing their responses to student writing in more of a feedforward manner (Rysdam &
Johnson-Shull, 2015-2016) that helps them see how to transfer the feedback to other contexts. It
is also recommended that students be assigned low-stakes writing assignments in which they are
invited to take risks, gain feedback, revise works, and develop in their understanding of writing
as a tool for academic, professional, and civic engagement.
In order to transform the institution’s values around writing, and how those values were
articulated in the classroom, Adler-Kassner and Estrem (2009) implemented Dynamic Criteria
Mapping (DCM) at Eastern Michigan University. The authors conducted focus groups with
stakeholders from across campus to understand better how instructors within the writing program
and among other disciplines taught and assessed writing. Based on focus group conversations,
Adler-Kassner and Estrem (2009) learned that first-year writing instructors valued “messy”
writing that revealed how students were grappling with complex topics; yet, this value was not
shared among instructors across campus. After conducting their research, Adler-Kassner and
Estrem (2009) developed a three-part assessment tool in which raters first marked boxes next to
features of good writing they found in the text, then rated the text using a Likert scale to indicate
how well those features of good writing were integrated into the text, and finally wrote a letter to
the writer explaining their experiences while reading. They state that they “desire to use this
assessment to both inform [the university’s writing] program’s practices and provide leverage to
garner resources (financial and otherwise) to continue developing those practices” (p. 27).
Adler-Kassner and Estrem (2009) conclude that universitywide engagement in DCM of student
writing is a powerful method for developing shared writing expectations and responding
effectively to students’ texts, whether those texts demonstrate features of good writing or reflect
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the “messiness” inherent when taking writing and thinking risks. Alford (2009) also used DCM
to guide his campus toward shared writing expectations and suggests that the method works not
only to help faculty develop commonalities among their understanding of good writing but also
to communicate that understanding to students, aligning values across institutional settings
including those held by major programs of study, instructors of particular classrooms, and
students with a variety of prior writing experiences and writing goals.
Recommendations to improve the transfer of learning. At a research seminar hosted
by Elon University between 2011 and 2013, 45 writing scholars examined the concept of writing
transfer. They concluded that in order to successfully complete new or challenging writing tasks,
students must draw on and repurpose prior writing knowledge, an action that makes evident that
the transfer of writing knowledge has occurred (as cited in Anson & Moore, 2017a). In order to
foster the transfer of writing knowledge across contexts, writing experts advocate for curricular
design that incorporates rhetorical analysis of audience and purpose as well as activities that
invite students to evaluate and understand writing expectations for a variety of situations (Anson
& Moore, 2017a). In Anson and Moore’s (2017b) edited volume on the transfer of writing
knowledge, Adler-Kassner, Clark, Robertson, Taczak, and Yancey (2017) assert that reflection is
“a systematic and intentional part of writers’ processes” (p. 29), one in which students theorize
about what they are learning and link prior knowledge with new knowledge. As Anson and
Moore (2017a) explain, it is the act of writing reflectively that helps to promote the transfer of
knowledge; for, metacognitive practices allow one to monitor consciously how one is applying
one’s knowledge and skills. It is important, therefore, to make metacognitive practices an
explicit part of students’ learning and writing experiences.
The scholarship presented in Anson and Moore (2017b) substantiates the value of
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incorporating metacognitive practices into the writing curriculum. Instructors might assign a
weekly writer’s log, in which writers reflect generally on the knowledge and skills they are
developing, or require that students submit a writer’s memo in which they reflect on what they
see as the particular strengths and weaknesses of their knowledge and skills in relation to
meeting the expectations of a specific assignment. As well, instructors might require students to
submit a memo as part of the revision process—one in which they highlight changes they made
to their text and explain the reason(s) for doing so. The recommendation, then, to develop and
implement a training program so that faculty provide students with meaningful opportunities
segmented and scaffolded throughout their college experience to learn, practice, and transfer
writing knowledge and skills within and among their courses is appropriate (Clark & Estes,
2008; Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016; Rueda, 2011).
An Integrated Implementation and Evaluation Plan for Writing and Writing Education
Implementation and Evaluation Framework
The New World Kirkpatrick Model (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016), based on the
original Kirkpatrick Four Level Model of Evaluation (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2006),
informed the implementation and evaluation plan of this study. The New World Kirkpatrick
Model suggests that evaluation plans begin with the mission and goals of the organization so that
seemingly singular efforts relate to high-level results. Implementation and evaluation plans then
follow a backwards design in which short-term observations and measurements, what
Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick (2016) refer to as “leading indicators,” are identified and aligned
with recommended solutions to the organization’s mission and goals. Following a reverse order
when designing, implementing, and evaluating solutions to organizational problems allows for a
sequence of three actions: a) first, the identification and assessment of desired external and
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internal outcomes that correlate to critical organizational behaviors; b) next, the identification of
indicators that show that learning occurred during implementation of such behaviors; and c) the
emergence of implementation strategies with which organizational members (administration,
faculty, staff, and students) are engaged and satisfied. Designing the implementation and
evaluation plan in this manner not only connects immediate solutions to larger organizational
goals but also solicits buy in from organizational members to ensure success (Kirkpatrick and
Kirkpatrick, 2016).
Organizational Purpose, Need, and Expectations
By 2025, CSS expects each of its 23 campuses to enhance student success by increasing
both 4-year and 6-year graduation rates and narrowing achievement gaps as indexed by student
persistence and graduation rates for subgroups of students, including transfer students,
underrepresented students, and students with low socioeconomic status. Because students are
required to fulfill the Graduation Writing Assessment Requirement (GWAR) by demonstrating
advanced levels of writing proficiency prior to degree attainment, this project evaluated the
degree to which the institution’s curriculum supported student achievement of writing
performance goals. Students’ writing skills attainment has personal, professional, and public
consequences; thus, this study examined the knowledge, skills, and organizational barriers to
improved writing skills. The proposed solution, an intentionally designed writing across the
curriculum program with instructional training aides and sustained writing practice at all levels,
should produce the desired organizational outcomes—a decrease in students’ time to degree,
gainful employment, and civic engagement.
Results and Leading Indicators
Table 5 shows the proposed results and leading indicators in the form of outcomes,
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metrics, and methods for both external and internal outcomes for CSS. If the internal outcomes
that students demonstrate advanced levels of writing proficiency and earn their degrees in a
timely manner are met as expected as a result of the design and implementation of new writing
across the curriculum activities, then external outcomes, such as increased satisfaction of the
institution by employer and alumni, should also be realized.

Table 5

Outcomes, Metrics, and Methods for External and Internal Indicators
Outcome Metric(s) Method(s)
External Indicators
Employer surveys would
indicate satisfaction with
students’ communication
skills
The number of positive responses to
survey items and improved industry
relations
Solicit annual data from employers
Alumni surveys would
reveal graduates’
satisfaction with level of
writing skills to perform
personal, professional, and
civic responsibilities
The number of positive responses to
survey items
Solicit annual data from alumni
Internal Indicators
The number of student
graduates would increase as
expected in the CSU’s 2025
Graduation Initiative
Students’ time to degree attainment
and achievement gap ratios
Disaggregate graduation data by
college, major, class level,
socioeconomic status, gender, and
ethnicity
The number of students
completing the Graduation
Writing Assessment
Requirement (GWAR)
prior to their senior year
would increase
GWAR completion rates Aggregate data from Level 3.3
(student writing) and then disaggregate
by college, major, class level,
socioeconomic status, gender, and
ethnicity

Stakeholder Behavior
Critical behaviors. Students at CSS are responsible for demonstrating advanced writing
skills. While students develop rhetorical strategies for academic writing during their first year on
campus, students must have opportunities across contexts to sustain their practice and prevent
skills atrophy. The first critical behavior in order to achieve such results is that the university
design effective educational programming for both faculty and students to aid in writing learning
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outcomes. The second critical behavior is that faculty members apply best practices of writing
instruction into the curriculum and support students in their efforts to advance their writing
proficiency, recognizing that students’ language skills vary based on differences among
discourse communities. The third critical behavior is that students gain and employ reflective
practices to help identify writing weaknesses and seek support to improve skills in order to then
demonstrate advanced writing proficiency via the GWAR by the end of junior year. The specific
metrics, methods, and timing for each of these outcome behaviors appear in Table 6.
Table 6

Critical Behaviors with Assessment Metrics, Methods, and Timing
Critical Behavior Metric(s) Method(s) Timing
1.Design effective programming
for both faculty and students to
aid in writing instruction and
education
The number of new
and modified
course proposals in
general education
and the disciplines
that incorporate
writing instruction
and sustained
writing practice
(thereby being
designated as
GWAR-certified
courses)
The university writing
committee shall track the
design and implementation of
these courses.
Initially, a call for
new and modified
course proposals will
go out with
submission deadline
for the 2020
academic catalog,
and the committee
will meet biweekly
to approve courses.
Thereafter, the
committee will track
instruction monthly.
2. Apply best practices of writing
instruction into the curriculum and
support students, recognizing that
students’ language skills vary
based on language difference
among discourse communities
Course and
instructor
evaluations;
random collections
of student writing
for assessment
The university writing
committee shall spot check
syllabi and graded essays.
At monthly
meetings, the
committee will
discuss findings.
3. Gain and employ reflective
practices to help identify writing
weaknesses and seek support to
improve skills in order to then
demonstrate advanced writing
proficiency
Collect and review
writers’ reflections
and major writing
projects
The university writing
committee shall assess
student writing using a
university-wide rubric for
writing competency
University-wide
writing assessment
will occur every
other year.

Required drivers. Students will require support and encouragement from faculty and
staff across the institution as they seek to apply the writing skills they learn in the classroom and
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advance their ability to communicate effectively. As well, faculty who teach writing in their
disciplines will require support and encouragement from their chairs; the staff at the Center for
Teaching, Learning, and Technology; and the organization as whole both to reinforce what they
learn during writing across the curriculum training and to apply what they have learned regularly
in the classroom. CSS should establish rewards for the achievement of writing-related and
degree attainment performance goals to enhance the support and encouragement of students,
faculty, and staff. Table 7 shows the recommended drivers to support critical behaviors of
students, faculty, and staff.
Table 7

Required Drivers to Support Critical Behaviors
Method(s) Timing
Reinforcing
Universitywide writing committee meetings to
review curriculum, establish goals and timeframes,
and allocate resources to improve campus writing
education
Monthly
Writing-in-the-disciplines training and job aids
that support students during the writing and
learning process
Ongoing
Course activities that invite students to explore the
ways in which professionals in their chosen fields
write and how rhetorical choices relate to those
workplaces
Ongoing
Encouraging
Campus conversations that highlight the
importance of writing skills development for the
achievement of personal and professional
outcomes
Ongoing
Writing models and low-stakes writing
opportunities that invite risk-taking, support
revision, and foster writing skills development
Ongoing throughout a course
and major program of study
Rewarding
Faculty stipends for writing in the disciplines
training workshops and GWAR instructor
certification
Workshop-based
Public acknowledgement, such as a mention at
college-level and departmental meetings, when
faculty participate in training workshops and earn
GWAR instructor certification
Workshop-based
Personal acknowledgement, such as a
congratulatory email, when students complete the
GWAR
Once, upon milestone completion
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Monitoring
Success stories shared by the Provost during
online video communications
Monthly
Departmental reports on faculty confidence and
self-efficacy in writing-related teaching tasks
submitted to the Senior Vice Provost for Academic
Programs and Planning
During annual program review reports
Frequent, quick check-ins by a universitywide
writing committee members with writing-intensive
course instructors via syllabus collection and
meetings to help the organization monitor goal-
attainment progress and help faculty make
adjustments if results are not matching
expectations
Monthly
Student learning assessment by faculty in the form
of ongoing confidence checks to help monitor
knowledge and motivation and make instructional
adjustments if necessary
Ongoing

Organizational support. In order to ensure that faculty, staff, and students are
continuously performing critical behaviors, CSS must establish processes and systems, or
required drivers (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016). Such required drivers support stakeholders’
performance and hold the organization accountable by reinforcing, encouraging, rewarding, and
monitoring behaviors on an ongoing basis.
Reinforcing. Methods of reinforcing that support critical behaviors are those training
efforts that provide stakeholders with assistance and guidance (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016).
At CSS, reinforcing will occur at the highest level when universitywide writing committee
members meet to review curriculum, establish goals and timeframes, and allocate resources to
improve campus writing education. Once goals are set and resources are allocated, the
committee will work with instructional support staff at the Center for Teaching, Learning, and
Technology to design writing-in-the-disciplines training aids that support students during the
writing and learning process. Faculty training will allow instructors to build course activities
that invite students to explore the ways in which professionals in their chosen fields write and
how rhetorical choices relate to those workplaces, thereby supporting students’ critical writing
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behaviors.
Encouraging. While the organization ought to be encouraging constituents at all times, in
order to support critical behaviors, CSS should plan encouragement more formally and regularly.
Generally, encouragement occurs by way of coaching and mentoring (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick,
2016). Campus conversations that highlight the importance of writing skills development for the
achievement of personal and professional outcomes will serve to develop and foster an
organizational culture of writing that extends into particular classrooms. Then, in the classroom
setting, instructors can mentor students by offering writing models and low-stakes writing
opportunities that invite risk-taking, support revision, and foster writing skills development.
Rewarding. Rewarding as a means of supporting critical behaviors extends beyond
financial incentives should be compatible with performance expectations (Kirkpatrick &
Kirkpatrick, 2016). To reward faculty for the time and effort required while engaging in writing-
in-the-disciplines training workshops and GWAR instructor certification programming, stipends
will be provided. Public acknowledgement, such as a mention at college-level and departmental
meetings, will also be implemented as a reward method for faculty when they participate in
training workshops and earn GWAR instructor certification. Finally, students will receive
personal acknowledgement, such as a congratulatory email, when they complete the GWAR
prior to their senior year.
Monitoring. While reinforcing, encouraging, and rewarding are methods of support
faculty, staff, and student behaviors, the monitoring of such behaviors will hold stakeholders
accountable for their performance after the initial implementation of the initiative (Kirkpatrick &
Kirkpatrick, 2016). In order to send a message that the initiative is important and the
performance of critical behaviors are non-negotiable, the Provost can share success stories
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during her monthly online campuswide video communications. As well, the Senior Vice Provost
for Academic Affairs can ask deans and department chairs to report on faculty confidence and
self-efficacy in writing-related teaching tasks during program reviews. The universitywide
writing committee members can regularly assess classroom writing instruction to measure the
initiative’s effectiveness, and frequent check-ins with faculty via syllabus collection and
meetings can help the organization monitor goal-attainment progress. Such methods of
monitoring will help faculty make adjustments if results are not matching expectations. Finally,
faculty can assess student learning in the form of ongoing confidence checks to help monitor
students’ knowledge and motivation and make instructional adjustments if necessary.
Learning
Learning goals. Upon completion of the recommended solutions, most notably
implementation of writing courses across the curriculum, students will be able to do the
following:
1. Categorize and understand multiple literacies that demonstrate advanced writing
proficiency in general education (GE) and major disciplines.
2. Apply multiple literacies appropriate to particular rhetorical situations.
3. Reflect on rhetorical choices and how those choices affect the intended audience.
4. Value the development and demonstration of advanced writing skills.
5. Draw upon self-confidence to achieve advanced levels of writing proficiency and engage
in help-seeking behaviors throughout the process
6. Set both performance- and mastery-level writing goals and persist at attaining them.
The achievement of the above six outcomes will lead to the critical literacy skillset necessary for
academic, professional, and civic success.
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Newly designed writing-intensive courses. The student learning goals listed above will
be achieved with newly designed writing-intensive courses that follow a writing-in-the-
disciplines faculty training series and a GWAR instructor certification program, both of which
will present best practices in writing instruction across the disciplines, including assignment
design and responses to student writing. Faculty will study topics pertaining to how best to
model writing in their disciplines and utilize low-stakes writing opportunities to encourage
students to take risks and develop as writers. Instructors also will gain strategies for responding
to student writing efficiently and effectively. The attainment and application of such declarative
and procedural knowledge on the part of the faculty will drive students to achieve intended
outcomes and help the organization to meet its graduation performance goals. The training
series and GWAR instructor certification program will be blended, consisting of four
asynchronous online learning modules and four face-to-face, whole group workshop sessions
with others from the same academic department and/or college. The total time for completion of
the training series and instructor certification is 480 minutes (six hours).
During the asynchronous online learning modules, instructors will be provided a variety
of learning opportunities. In the first module, instructors will be provided an opportunity to
consider and review discourse conventions relative to their field. The second module will
present a job aid of sample writing assignments that elicit a range of student critical thinking and
writing skills based on Bloom’s Taxonomy. The third module will contain a job aid of sample
grading rubrics that may be used to evaluate student responses to the assignments shared in
Module 2. Finally, in the fourth module, a sample paper with feedback will be presented using
Camtasia to walk faculty through efficient and effective approaches to responding to student
writing. Key terms and expectations will be defined via discussion and using examples, and
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faculty will have time to consider their level of understanding during pauses in the videos.
Following the presentation of information in each of the modules, faculty will be provided the
opportunity to design their own assignments and practice responding to samples of student
writing; they will submit their assignments and graded sample essays and receive feedback from
both peers and an instructional support person at the Center for Teaching, Learning, and
Technology.
Faculty then will gather together with their peers and the instructional support person at
the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology to engage in synchronous, in-person
workshop sessions. During those sessions, the focus will be on applying what was learned
during the online modules via group activities, role-playing, discussions, modeling, and teaching
to back to one another. More experienced faculty members will share with others the value and
benefits of improved assignment design and feedback. Together with the instructional support
person, more experienced faculty members will also model how to design discipline and course-
specific assignments adequately as well as how to incorporate marginal and summative
comments on student writing effectively and efficiently.
Faculty learning will lead to student learning, and student learning is the focus of this
evaluation study. Based on the literature reviewed and the data gathered during this study,
increased writing instruction across the curriculum will help the organization attain its
performance goals. Indeed, faculty training is essential to improved student learning, but so, too,
is the knowledge and motivation students gain during their classroom experiences. The student
learning goals listed in the previous section will be achieved during coursework at all levels of a
student’s major program of study. The curriculum designed and implemented in an effort to help
stakeholders and the organization attain its performance goals will invite students to explore the
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ways in which professionals in their chosen fields write and how rhetorical choices relate to
those workplaces. Course instructors will cultivate the value students place on writing tasks by
highlighting the task’s importance to their personal and professional futures. Students will be
provided with opportunities segmented and scaffolded throughout the curriculum to learn,
practice, and transfer this declarative knowledge among their courses.
Courses will largely occur in face to face settings, last fifty or eighty minutes, and include
writing-intensive assignments for which students will be invited to set writing-related mastery
and performance goals. Instructors will convey effectively to students both general and
discipline-specific writing techniques and methods and offer students opportunities to engage in
deliberate, sustained writing practice during which they employ strategies appropriate for
different rhetorical situations. Major writing tasks will be broken into smaller ones, and students
will be presented with clear expectations and goals for each activity. Grading contracts also will
be incorporated into course designs to clarify tasks and assignment goals and offer students a
role in establishing an assignment’s expectations. Instructors will offer sufficient feedback and
model effective self-reflective practices to help students identify and examine their rhetorical
choices; as well they will assign regularly self-reflective activities and have students share their
reflections with one another so that they may build upon their skills. Finally, the organization as
a whole will aim to increase students’ awareness that they have the agency throughout their
curricular experiences to seek assistance on completing writing tasks and achieving their writing
goals.
Components of learning for newly designed writing-intensive courses. In order to
engage in the critical behaviors presented above both faculty and students must acquire the
following five components of learning: knowledge, skills, attitude, confidence, and commitment
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(Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016). Gaining knowledge is a forerunner to applying knowledge to
solve problems, and stakeholders must value the learning opportunities in which they gain
knowledge in order to use their knowledge and skills in the classroom and beyond. A focus on
increasing faculty members’ and students’ levels of confidence and commitment are also
essential in an effort to narrow the gap between their learning and behaviors. Stakeholders must
be both confident that they can succeed in applying their knowledge to meet performance goals
and committed to doing so. All together, the five learning components will help faculty and
students perform critical behaviors effectively, and it is therefore important to evaluate them.
Table 8 lists the evaluation methods and timing for these components of learning.
Table 8

Components of Learning for Newly Designed Writing-Intensive Courses
Methods Timing
Knowledge
Knowledge checks through discussions and
other individual/group activities (think-pair-
shares and peer response sessions) and
documented via observation notes
Periodically throughout the term in the
classroom
Knowledge checks through homework
assignments and documented via grades
Periodically throughout the term in the
classroom
Skills
Quality of the feedback from peers during peer
response sessions
Periodically throughout the term in the
classroom
Demonstration of writing skills through high-
stakes and low-stakes course assignments and
documented via grades
Periodically throughout the term in the
classroom
Action planning of their ongoing writing skills
development and future application during
self-reflection activities
During the last week of the term
Attitude
Instructors’ observations of students’
statements and actions demonstrating that they
see the benefit of what they are being asked to
write for the course
Periodically throughout the term in the
classroom
Groups discussions of the value students place
on what they are being asked to do in the
classroom
Periodically throughout the term in the
classroom
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Retrospective pre- and post-course assessment
items about students’ attitudes about writing
skills development
During the last week of the term
Confidence
Survey items using scaled items checking
students’ levels of confidence in the knowledge
and skills they are gaining
Periodically throughout the term in the
classroom
Written or verbal discussions about students’
confidence levels following practice and
feedback
Periodically throughout the term in the
classroom
Retrospective pre- and post-course assessment
items about students’ level of confidence in
their ability to apply knowledge to meet
performance goals
During the last week of the term
Commitment
Group discussions about students’ commitment
to ongoing writing skills development
Periodically throughout the term in the
classroom
Individual action plan design that includes
details on students’ ongoing commitment to
writing skills development
Periodically throughout the term in the
classroom
Retrospective pre- and post-course assessment
items about students’ level of commitment to
meeting performance goals
During the last week of the term

Stakeholder Reaction to Newly Designed Writing Curriculum
To any new program or initiative, it is imperative to evaluate participants’ reactions.
Evaluation at this level should be both formative and summative, with summative evaluation
occurring at different moments post program implementation—a few days after training may
result in a high response rate but will also neutralize responses, and then another evaluation after
several months have passed may offer deeper insights about the relevance and value of the
training (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016). At CSS, reactions to the writing-in-the-disciplines
faculty training series and a GWAR instructor certification program will be evaluated during
training sessions, at the culmination of the training program, and then again, several months later
in order to capture participants’ satisfaction with the program. As well, students’ reactions to
writing instruction will be assessed during and after a course. A variety of evaluation methods
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 183

can be employed to determine students’ reactions to newly designed writing-intensive courses
across the disciplines. For example, to evaluate the level of student engagement throughout the
term, instructors will observe student participation and monitor both attendance and the
completion of assignments. To determine the relevance of course content, students will engage
in a mid-term chat hosted by an instructional specialist from the Center for Teaching, Learning,
and Technology. The instruction specialist will engage in discussion with students, without the
presence of the instructor, gauging student’s satisfaction with multimodal assignments and
instructor feedback as well as their understanding of how the knowledge they’re gaining will
transfer to other contexts. Course evaluations after grades are submitted will be reviewed to
determine students’ engagement, their sense of the relevance of course materials, and their
overall satisfaction with the course.
Evaluation Tools
Immediately following a course. During the course, the instructor will monitor
students’ attendance and assignment completion; instructors also will observe student
participation during class sessions. These data will indicate engagement with the course
material. During the course, the instructor will conduct periodic pulse-checks by asking students
about the relevance of the content to their degree and career aspirations. Instructors also will
conduct confidence checks for understanding using peer response and self-reflection activities.
In addition, an instructional assistant from the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology
will conduct a mid-semester chat with students to provide anonymous, just-in-time feedback so
that the instructor can adjust course content and delivery and increase engagement. Questions
asked during the mid-term chat will be selected from those asked during the course evaluation
(see Appendix J).
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The instructor will administer a course evaluation during the last week of the semester
with Likert-scaled survey items and open-ended questions inviting students to indicate their
overall satisfaction with the content and delivery of the course, the relevance of the course
material to future professional contexts, and the value of and confidence in applying the
rhetorical knowledge and writing skills gained in the course to other contexts. See Appendix J
for the evaluation tool that will be administered immediately following the course.
Delayed for a period after course completion. Approximately three months after a
student completes a newly designed writing-intensive course, the universitywide writing
committee will administer a survey containing Likert-scaled and open-ended questions using the
Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick (2016) Blended Evaluation approach to measure, from the student’s
perspective, overall satisfaction with and relevance of course content. The evaluation also will
offer students an opportunity to rate their confidence in applying the knowledge and skills gained
in the course to other contexts as well as they value they place in doing so. Finally, students will
be asked to rate the applicability of the course’s writing-related content to their degree attainment
and/or post-degree success as well as the extent to which students’ demonstration of advanced
writing skills has resulted in positive outcomes. See Appendix K for an example of a blended
evaluation tool that may be beneficial when assessing this newly designed writing program.
Data Analysis and Reporting
Students’ advanced levels of writing proficiency for GWAR completion, degree
attainment, and post-degree success are measured by time to GWAR and degree completion as
well as by employer and alumni satisfaction. In addition to surveying employers and alumni,
annually the university will track the number of attempts to GWAR completion as well as 4-, 5-,
and 6- year degree attainment data to determine the degree to which performance goals are
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 185

achieved. Analyzing and reporting GWAR completion data with degree attainment data may
reveal how students’ learning and behaviors impact outcomes. Ideally, data will show that fewer
attempts at GWAR completion lead to a decrease in time to degree.
Reporting of students’ performance results will follow the current institutional approach
to the presentation of campus data. As a monitoring and accountability tool, data will be
published on both the university’s Institutional Research (IR) dashboard and the Academic
Programs and Planning (APP) webpage and will be summarized for publication in both an issue
of the weekly emailed campuswide news report and the Provost’s campuswide video messages.
Attainment will be presented via similar graphic presentations of students’ course reactions,
learning, and behavior attainment in an effort to monitor performance and hold the university
accountable for ongoing results. Such data, as collected in relation to particular course sections,
will be placed in an instructor’s personnel file and will be presented to instructors, department
chairs, and college deans immediately after course completion and again after the 90-day delayed
evaluation for analysis in an effort to help instructors, departments, and colleges identify
potential causes to any unmet outcomes and implement changes to address such causes. An
executive summary of the data also will be sent to the Senior Vice Provost for Academic
Programs and Planning for review.
Chapter Five of this evaluation study applied the New World Kirkpatrick Model
(Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016) to plan, implement, and evaluate recommendations that will
optimize student and organizational goal achievement related to the development of advanced
writing proficiency. Such a model aims to avoid assessment missteps by advocating for a
backwards design to planning, implementing, and evaluating the attainment of student and
universitywide goals. By integrating the evaluation of results with the implementation of leading
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 186

indicators and critical writing behaviors, CSS will more clearly align its mission and vision with
the particular learning objective of effective communication. CSS also will be able to isolate
potential causes to any unmet outcomes. The New World Kirkpatrick Model (Kirkpatrick &
Kirkpatrick, 2016) thus offers the university an opportunity to identify gaps in student learning
during formative evaluations of particular writing-intensive courses and provide a return on
expectations based on improvements made in response to immediate and delayed reactions to
instructional methods as well as course materials and content in relation to more broadly defined
outcomes of GWAR and degree completion and employer and alumni satisfaction.
Conclusion
Indeed, much time and effort is spent on campus to optimize overall performance.
Typically, efforts entail the evaluation of student performance via exams or by applying campus-
generated rubrics to assess essays designed to determine attainment of learning outcomes; the
university also elicits student feedback to instructional methods and materials via course
evaluations. Such approaches to evaluation measure learning and student satisfaction of course
content but neither account for students’ reactions to their own growth and development across
contexts nor consider how their learning affects critical behaviors and attainment of more
broadly defined personal and/or organizational goals. This is a missed opportunity to foster self-
reflexive practices and learn from students more about what they need to develop their
communication skills. What’s more, after the university collects and analyzes student data, its
academic assessment council may discuss results, but it seldom partners with the academic
senate to design and implement real changes in response to the information, changes adopted
campuswide and for which all members of the organization are held accountable. The
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 187

recommendations in this chapter provided a model in an effort to address the identified gaps in
writing and writing education at CSS.
Data collected from over 7,000 undergraduate students revealed that college readiness in
English continues to play a role in student writing success well beyond completion of first-year
developmental writing coursework at CSS. As students progress towards degree completion,
instructor feedback influences both students’ knowledge of effective communicative choices and
motivation to improve their rhetoric and writing skills for personal, professional, and public
purposes. In order to attain institutional performance outcomes relative to degree attainment, the
culture of writing on college campuses must foster students’ reflective and reflexive practices
and intentionally design opportunities for the transfer of learning across class levels and
disciplines. Campuswide adoption and implementation of the recommendations presented here
may not result in the attainment of all organizational performance goals, but the findings of this
study do invite opportunities for CSS to consider more meaningfully the ways in which its
writing curriculum is helping to prepare students to attain the critical literacy skills needed for
degree attainment, employability, and active citizenry.
As a leading institution of higher education, CSS must continue to move more
intentionally from a focus on students’ possession of knowledge to their performance of
knowledge, including their ability to co-create knowledge with others in a variety of contexts and
in diverse settings. The purpose of any college education should be to foster both habits of mind
and specialization of knowledge. Integrating writing with discipline- and context-specific
concepts across students’ four-plus years is one way to accomplish this objective. As this
research shows, offering students sustained multimodal writing practice across all levels of their
college experience along with increased feedback and reflective practices facilitates behaviors
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 188

critical to their success. Whatever revisions the organization implements to improve writing and
writing education on campus, it is clear that an accountability system is needed – one that relies
upon a more comprehensive assessment program with formative, benchmark, and summative
assessments of students writing. CSS also needs professional development opportunities for
instructors, smaller class sizes, and supplemental support for its struggling students.
Importantly, the findings of this study contribute not only to efforts of institutional
improvement but also to the ongoing discussion about writing and writing education at the CSU
systemwide level. The CSU has a history of defining the problem of student success through the
lens of college readiness in English and mathematics, and this study was in part an attempt to
disambiguate the connection between college readiness in English and degree attainment.
Particularly, the finding of this study that underprepared college students fail the upper-division
writing proficiency exam at over double the rate of their better-prepared peers suggests that the
connection between readiness and degree attainment extends well beyond first year
“remediation.” The findings of this study, then, implicate the CSU’s most recent readiness and
placement policy revision that theoretically erased remediation from the system’s practices.
According to unpublished systemwide data, 86% of underprepared CSU students meet the
system’s GE written communication requirement at the end of their first year, but what remains
to be omitted from any conversation about students’ writing skills is what happens after they are
“prepared” to succeed at the college level. Essentially, it is not that college students need fixing
before or during their first year on campus in order to succeed. Performance goals should be set
beyond first-year composition to ensure that students succeed in all courses that require an
element of communication. The recommendations here provide an example of how to do so.
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 189

Students involved in this research project made it clear that they wanted more writing
instruction and more responses to their writing. Institutional data revealed that regardless of
whether underprepared students fulfilled a developmental course, or series of courses, by the end
of their first year on campus and were thus assumed to be as ready to succeed as their better-
served peers, all students continue to benefit from sustained writing practice and support across
all levels of their college experience; this is particularly true for underprepared students,
however. In all, neither the institution nor the system ought to assume that one, two, or five
designated writing-intensive classes over the course of a student’s four-plus years of
postsecondary study will be sufficient to support students writing skills development. A
deliberate benchmarking of student performance might assist the institution in collecting student
data and monitoring their attainment of advanced writing proficiency levels across a writing-
enriched curriculum as opposed to upon entry and exit.
In essence, the heart of this study is the answer to this: what does it mean to write well
throughout college and beyond? Clearly, there are multiple ways to expand upon the research
and more thoroughly answer that question. For one, it would be beneficial for any further study
to include additional student voices. Ideally, more students would respond to the survey and
more students across all levels and programs would engage in interviews or focus groups.
Tracing the themes established in this project among the responses of more students would help
to confirm the findings of this study. Additionally, a more thorough study of how writing
instruction occurs in the classroom would be valuable. A project that focuses solely on
classroom observations and analysis of writing assignments would no doubt yield interesting
results about writing and writing education on campus. As well, a longitudinal study tracking
the writing performance of underprepared students across the curriculum might provide more
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 190

answers as to when and why they struggle as well as how the institution can help. In short, this
research project joins the many others that have examined writing practices on a college campus,
but collectively there is still work to be done.
Completing a cross-campus analysis of the system’s varied writing programs might result
in strengthened influence over CSU educational policy, which affects over 470,000 students each
year. A similar study, or elements thereof, could be conducted at all 23 campuses of the CSU
system to determine to what extent the system is helping students develop multiple literacies,
knowledge of a broad range of genre and discourse conventions, and audience awareness
required to participate in today’s global market; critique the systems in which they operate; and
design the world of tomorrow.
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 191

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Appendix A:
Emailed Recruitment Letter with Informed Consent and Link to Survey

DATE
Dear Student,
One of CSS’ stated learning objectives is “effective communication.” This means that
during their careers at CSS, students will develop writing skills that enable them to communicate
effectively in different contexts, both in and outside of CSS. The CSU established an upper-
division writing requirement, the Graduation Writing Assessment Requirement (GWAR), to
ensure students achieve this outcome. To determine if this objective is being met, Dawn Janke, a
doctoral student at the University of Southern California and director of the University Writing
and Rhetoric Center at CSS, San Luis Obispo, is conducting a study of students’ writing
experiences across class standings.
INFORMED CONSENT TO PARTICIPATE IN A RESEARCH PROJECT
An Evaluation Study of Writing Skills at CSS
The purpose of this study is to conduct a gap analysis to examine the knowledge,
motivation, and organizational influences that interfere with student achievement in writing
proficiency in relation to completion of the university’s Graduation Writing Requirement and
students’ degree attainment.
You are being asked to take part in this study by completing the following online, 35-
question survey. Your participation will take approximately fifteen minutes. Please be aware
that you are not required to participate in this research, you may skip any items that you prefer
not to answer, and you may discontinue your participation at any time without penalty.
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Aside from the time it will take to complete the survey, there are no possible risks
associated with participation. Responses will be anonymous to protect your privacy and thus will
have no impact on your course grades or your career at CSS. You may discontinue participation
in the survey at any time.
While there are no direct benefits associated with participating in this study, your
responses will assist the university in determining whether CSS students are receiving effective
and progressive writing education that helps them meet their writing goals and the institution’s
written communication expectations.
If you have questions regarding this study or would like to be informed of the results
when the study is completed, please feel free to contact University Writing and Rhetoric Center
Director Dawn Janke at djanke@usc.edu. If you have concerns regarding the manner in which
the study is conducted, you may contact Dr. Michael Black, Chair of the CSS Institutional
Review Board, at (805) 756-2894, mblack@css.edu, or Ms. Debbie Hart, Compliance Officer, at
(805) 756-1508, dahart@usc.edu.
If you agree to voluntarily participate in this research project as described, please indicate
your agreement by clicking on the link below and completing the online survey. You may print
a copy of this consent form for your reference. Thank you for taking the time to be a part of this
study.
Link to survey:

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Appendix B:
Survey
14

Thank you for taking the time to complete this survey. It should take no more than fifteen
minutes to do so. Your responses will assist the university in determining whether CSS students
are receiving effective and progressive writing education that helps them meet their writing goals
and the institution’s written communication expectations. All survey responses are anonymous
and thus will have no impact on your course grades or your career at CSS. You may discontinue
participation in the survey at any time.
Survey Items
1. Using a scale from all to none (all, most some, few, none), in how many of your classes
this year have you done the following: completed writing assignments in class as a non-
graded task; completed writing assignments outside of class as a non-graded task;
completed writing assignments in class for a grade; completed writing assignments
outside of class for a grade.
2. Using a scale from all to none (all, most some, few, none), during the current school year,
for how many of your writing assignments have you done the following: brainstormed
(listed ideas, mapped concepts, prepared an outline, etc.) to develop your ideas before
you started drafting your assignment; talked with your instructor to develop your ideas
before you started drafting your assignment; talked with a classmate, friend, or family
member to develop your ideas before you started drafting your assignment; received
feedback from your instructor about a draft before turning in your final assignment;
received feedback from a classmate, friend, or family member about a draft before
turning in your final assignment; visited a campus-based writing or tutoring center to get

14
Of the survey items, numbers 1-7 are taken from a survey completed by CSS students in 2009.
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help with your writing assignment before turning it in; Used an online tutoring service to
get help with your writing assignment before turning it in; Proofread your final draft for
errors before turning it in.
3. Using a scale from all to none (all, most some, few, none), during the current school year,
in how many of your writing assignments have you done each of the following: narrated
or described one of your own experiences; summarized something you read, such as an
article, book, or online publication; analyzed or evaluated something you read,
researched, or observed; described your methods or findings related to data you collected
in lab or field work, a survey project, etc.; argued a position using evidence and
reasoning; explained in writing the meaning of numerical or statistical data; written in the
style and format of a specific field (engineering, history, psychology, etc.); Included
drawings, tables, photos, screen shots, or other visual content into your written
assignment; created a project with multimedia (web page, poster, slide presentation such
as Power Point, etc.).
4. Using a scale from all to none (all, most some, few, none), during the current school year,
for how many of your writing assignments has your instructor done the following:
provided written instructions describing what s/he wanted you to do; provided verbal
instructions describing what s/he wanted you to do; explained in advance what s/he
wanted you to learn; provided written criteria (i.e. a rubric) in advance explaining s/he
would grade your assignment; provided verbal criteria in advance explaining how s/he
would grade your assignment; provided a sample of a completed assignment written by
the instructor or a student; asked you to complete short pieces of writing that s/he did not
grade; asked you to give feedback to a classmate about a draft or outline the classmate
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had written; asked you to write with classmates to complete a group project, asked you to
address a real or imagined audience such as your classmates, a politician, non-experts,
etc.
5. Reflect on your experiences during the current school year and respond to the following
statements by indicating Yes or No: I have prepared a portfolio that collects written work
from more than one class; I will prepare a portfolio that collects written work from more
than one class; I have submitted work I wrote or co-wrote to a student publication or a
professional publication (magazine, journal, newspaper, collection of student work, etc.);
I will submit work I wrote or co- wrote to a student publication or a professional
publication (magazine, journal, newspaper, collection of student work, etc.); I have
submitted work to a reader outside of the classroom.
6. To what extend do you agree with this statement: I am confident in my current abilities as
a writer: Strongly disagree, disagree, agree, strongly agree.
7. Given my experiences at CSS, my attainment of writing skills can best be described as
poor/no attainment, minimal attainment, average attainment, good attainment, superior
attainment.
8. On a scale of 0 to 5, rate how often you have avoided using either languages other than
English or varieties of English in your assigned projects because you were worried that
doing so might result in a negative evaluation or poor grade. (0- Never, 1-Rarely, 2-
Sometimes, 3-About half of the time, 4-Often, 5-Always)
9. On a scale of 0 to 5, rate how often you are encouraged to incorporate either languages
other than English or varieties of English into your assigned projects. (0-Never, 1-Rarely,
2-Sometimes, 3-About half of the time, 4-Often, 5-Always)
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10. On a scale of 1 to 5, rate how strongly you agree with the following statement: I earn
poor grades on assignments because English is one of multiple languages I use in my
daily life. (1-Strongly disagree, 2-Disagree, 3-Neutral, 4-Agree, 5- Strongly Agree)
11. On a scale of 1 to 5, rate how strongly you agree with the following statement: CSS
supports writers who speak more than one language. (1-Strongly disagree, 2- Disagree, 3-
Neutral, 4-Agree, 5-Strongly Agree)
12. On a scale of 1 to 5, rate how strongly you agree with the following statement:
Instruction at CSS has helped me to view language difference to be an asset in the 21
st

century’s global society. (1-Strongly disagree, 2-Disagree, 3-Neutral, 4- Agree, 5-
Strongly Agree)
13. On a scale of 1 to 5, rate how strongly you agree with the following statement:
Instruction at CSS has helped me to learn how to analyze the expectations of a particular
audience and design my communications to meet those expectations. (1-Strongly
disagree, 2-Disagree, 3-Neutral, 4-Agree, 5-Strongly Agree)
14. On a scale of 1 to 5, rate how strongly you agree with the following statement:
Instruction at CSS has helped me to learn how to apply discipline-specific writing
conventions to achieve particular purposes. (1-Strongly disagree, 2-Disagree, 3- Neutral,
4-Agree, 5-Strongly Agree)
15. On a scale of 0 to 5, rate how often you are assigned projects that require you to
incorporate more than one mode of communication, such as written, oral, and visual. (0-
Never, 1-Rarely, 2-Sometimes, 3-About half of the time, 4-Often, 5- Always)
16. On a scale of 1 to 5, rate how strongly you agree with the following statement:
Instruction at CSS prepares me effectively to incorporate multiple modes of
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communication, such as written, oral, and visual, when completing projects. (1- Strongly
disagree, 2-Disagree, 3-Neutral, 4-Agree, 5-Strongly Agree)
17. On a scale of 1 to 5, rate how strongly you agree with the following statement:
Instruction at CSS prepares me effectively to integrate multiple skills (written, oral,
visual, digital) to reach particular audiences and achieve particular purposes. (1-Strongly
disagree, 2-Disagree, 3-Neutral, 4-Agree, 5-Strongly Agree)
18. On a scale of 1 to 5, rate how strongly you agree with the following statement: I can
apply a variety of strategies to meet the purposes of a particular communicative situation.
(1-Strongly disagree, 2-Disagree, 3-Neutral, 4-Agree, 5- Strongly Agree)
19. On a scale of 1 to 5, rate how strongly you agree with the following statement: It is
important that I am highly proficient in writing in order to be successful in my intended
profession (1-Strongly disagree, 2-Disagree, 3-Neutral, 4-Agree, 5- Strongly Agree)
20. On a scale of 1 to 5, rate how strongly you agree with the following statement: Campus
writing support services are available to help me improve my writing skills. (1-Strongly
disagree, 2-Disagree, 3-Neutral, 4-Agree, 5-Strongly Agree)
21. On a scale of 1 to 5, rate how strongly you agree with the following statement: I am
comfortable seeking help on my writing (1-Strongly disagree, 2-Disagree, 3- Neutral, 4-
Agree, 5-Strongly Agree)
22. On a scale of 0 to 5, rate the level at which you see value in working with individuals
other than your instructor to improve your writing skills. (0-Not at all valuable, 1- Only
slightly valuable, 2-Somewhat valuable, 3-Neutrally valuable, 4-Mostly valuable, 5-
Highly valuable)
23. On a scale of 0 to 5, indicate how often self-reflection exercises, such as writer’s memos
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 227

that explain the processes and choices you make when completing a writing project, are
assigned in the classroom. (0-Never assigned, 1-Rarely assigned, 2-Sometimes assigned,
3-Assigned about half of the time, 4-Often assigned, 5-Always assigned)
24. On a scale of 0 to 5, rate how often during the writing process you reflect upon feedback
given by peers, classmates, writing center tutors, or instructors. (0- Never, 1-Rarely, 2-
Sometimes, 3-About half of the time, 4-Often, 5-Always)
25. On a scale of 0 to 5, rate how valuable reflective practices are for improving your writing
skills. (0-Not at all valuable, 1- Only slightly valuable, 2-Somewhat valuable, 3-Neutrally
valuable, 4-Mostly valuable, 5-Highly valuable)
26. On a scale of 0 to 5, rate how confident you are in your ability to reflect on your writing
practices. (0-Not at all confident, 1-Hardly confident, 2-Somewhat confident, 3-Generally
confident, 4-Very confident, Extremely confident)
27. On a scale of 0 to 5, rate how confident you are in your ability to demonstrate highly
proficient writing skills upon graduation. (0-Not at all confident, 1-Hardly confident, 2-
Somewhat confident, 3-Generally confident, 4-Very confident, Extremely confident)
28. On a scale of 0 to 5, rate the level at which you find it valuable to improve your writing
skills for academic success during your time in college. (0-Not at all valuable, 1- Only
slightly valuable, 2-Somewhat valuable, 3-Neutrally valuable, 4-Mostly valuable, 5-
Highly valuable)
29. On a scale of 0 to 5, rate the level at which your writing projects across the curriculum at
CSS are preparing you to communicate effectively in a variety of professional contexts
post graduation. (0-Not at all prepared, 1- Only slightly prepared, 2-Somewhat prepared,
3-Neither prepared nor not prepared, 4-Mostly prepared, 5-Highly prepared)
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30. On a scale of 0 to 5, rate the level at which your writing projects across the curriculum at
CSS are preparing you to communicate effectively in a variety of personal contexts post
graduation. (0-Not at all prepared, 1- Only slightly prepared, 2-Somewhat prepared, 3-
Neither prepared nor not prepared, 4-Mostly prepared, 5-Highly prepared)
31. On a scale of 1 to 5, rate how strongly you agree with the following statement: I view
writing as a tool I will use to participate in the workforce upon graduation. (1-Strongly
disagree, 2-Disagree, 3-Neutral, 4-Agree, 5-Strongly Agree)
32. On a scale of 1 to 5, rate how strongly you agree with the following statement: I view
writing as a tool I will use to engage as a citizen upon graduation. (1- Strongly disagree,
2-Disagree, 3-Neutral, 4-Agree, 5-Strongly Agree)
33. On a scale of 1 to 5, rate how strongly you agree with the following statement: If I do not
improve my writing skills, then I will face academic consequences. (1- Strongly disagree,
2-Disagree, 3-Neutral, 4-Agree, 5-Strongly Agree)
34. On a scale of 1 to 5, rate how strongly you agree with the following statement: If I do not
improve my writing skills, then I will face personal consequences. (1- Strongly disagree,
2-Disagree, 3-Neutral, 4-Agree, 5-Strongly Agree)
35. On a scale of 1 to 5, rate how strongly you agree with the following statement: If I do not
improve my writing skills, then I will face professional consequences. (1- Strongly
disagree, 2-Disagree, 3-Neutral, 4-Agree, 5-Strongly Agree)

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Appendix C:
Emailed Recruitment Letter – Focus Group Participation

DATE
Dear Student,
One of CSS’ stated learning objectives is “effective communication.” This means that
during their careers at CSS, students will develop writing skills that enable them to communicate
effectively in different contexts, both in and outside of CSS. The CSU established an upper-
division writing requirement, the Graduation Writing Assessment Requirement (GWAR), to
ensure students achieve this outcome. To determine if this objective is being met, Dawn Janke, a
doctoral student at the University of Southern California and director of the University Writing
and Rhetoric Center at CSS, San Luis Obispo, is conducting a study of students’ writing
experiences across class standings.
One component of the study is to gather information from focus group discussions with
students. You are invited to participate in an hour-long focus group discussion with five other
students. While there are no direct benefits associated with participation in this study, your
comments during the focus group session will assist the university in determining whether CSS
students are receiving effective and progressive writing education that helps them meet their
writing goals and the institution’s written communication expectations. Your responses will be
maintained confidentially by the researcher and thus will have no impact on your course grades
or your career at CSS. You may discontinue participation in the survey at any time.

Please reply to this email and confirm your interest in focus group participation. You will
be provided further information about the study and be invited to sign an Informed Consent
Sheet at the outset of the focus group session.
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Appendix D:
Informed Consent/Information Sheet – Focus Group Participation

University of Southern California
Rossier School of Education
3470 Trousdale Parkway
Los Angeles, CA 90089

INFORMED CONSENT FOR NON-MEDICAL RESEARCH – FOCUS GROUPS

FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY:
AN EVALUATION STUDY OF WRITING SKILLS AT CSS

You are invited to participate in a research study conducted by Dawn Janke, doctoral candidate
with the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education, and Dr. Jenifer
Crawford, Associate Professor of Clinical Education at the University of Southern California
Rossier School of Education, because you are a full-time student enrolled in a writing course at
CSS. Your participation is voluntary. You should read the information below and ask questions
about anything you do not understand before deciding whether to participate. Please take as
much time as you need to read the consent form. You may also decide to discuss participation
with your family or friends. If you decide to participate, you will be asked to sign this form. You
also will be given a copy of this form.

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The purpose of this project is to examine the knowledge, motivation, and organizational
influences that support students’ development of writing skills from their first year to graduation
and beyond.

STUDY PROCEDURES
If you volunteer to participate in this study, you will be asked to take part in a one-time, hour-
long focus group session with five to seven other students. Focus group questions will center on
your writing education and experiences as well as your feelings about your development of
writing skills. The discussion will be recorded and later transcribed –student identification will
not be recognizable in the recording or detailed in the transcription.

POTENTIAL RISKS AND DISCOMFORTS
There is a slight risk to loss of confidentiality associated with this study: another member of the
focus group might repeat something you said and cite you as the source.

POTENTIAL BENEFITS TO PARTICIPANTS AND/OR TO SOCIETY
While there are no direct benefits associated with participating in this study, your responses
during the focus group session will assist the university in determining whether students are
receiving effective and progressive writing instruction.

PAYMENT/COMPENSATION FOR PARTICIPATION
As an incentive, the researcher will provide a pizza meal for participants.
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POTENTIAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST OF THE INVESTIGATOR
There are no financial considerations that compromise, or have the appearance of compromising,
the researcher’s professional judgment in proposing, conducting, supervising, or reporting
research. Because the primary researcher has a management position in which she coordinates a
portion of the writing curriculum at the institution at which she is conducting this study, she
does, however, have a direct interest in the results of the research.

CONFIDENTIALITY
The focus groups will be recorded and transcribed. Upon transcription, the recording will be
destroyed. Transcriptions will be stored on a state-issued laptop and online in a password-
protected software program. Data will be kept indefinitely.

The primary researcher will keep the focus group transcription confidential as far as permitted by
law. However, if we are required to do so by law, we will disclose confidential information about
you. The members of the research team and the University of Southern California’s Human
Subjects Protection Program (HSPP) may access the data. The HSPP reviews and monitors
research studies to protect the rights and welfare of research subjects.

CERTIFICATE OF CONFIDENTIALITY
Any identifiable information obtained in connection with this study will remain confidential;
when the results of the research are published or discussed in conferences, no identifiable
information will be used.

PARTICIPATION AND WITHDRAWAL
Your participation in the focus group session is voluntary. Your refusal to participate will
involve no penalty or loss of benefits to which you are otherwise entitled. Specifically, your
participation in the focus group session will have no impact on any of your writing course grades
or your career at the institution.

You may withdraw your consent at any time and discontinue participation without penalty. You
are not waiving any legal claims, rights or remedies because of your participation in this research
study.

INVESTIGATOR’S CONTACT INFORMATION
If you have any questions or concerns about the research, please feel free to contact Dawn Janke,
Principal Investigator (djanke@usc.edu; 805-459-0896; 3470 Trousdale Parkway Los Angeles,
CA 90089).

RIGHTS OF RESEARCH PARTICIPANT – IRB CONTACT INFORMATION
If you have questions, concerns, or complaints about your rights as a research participant or the
research in general and are unable to contact the research team, or if you want to talk to someone
independent of the research team, please contact the University Park Institutional Review Board
(UPIRB), 3720 South Flower Street #301, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0702, (213) 821-5272 or
upirb@usc.edu. You may also contact the CSS Institutional Review Board at (805) 756-1508 or
research@css.edu.
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SIGNATURE OF RESEARCH PARTICIPANT

I have read the information provided above. I have been given a chance to ask questions. My
questions have been answered to my satisfaction, and I agree to participate in this study. I have
been given a copy of this form.

_________________________________________ __________________
Name of Participant Date

SIGNATURE OF INVESTIGATOR

I have explained the research to the participant and answered all of his/her questions. I believe
that he/she understands the information described in this document and freely consents to
participate.

_________________________________________ __________________
Name of Person Obtaining Consent Date

Date

FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 233

Appendix E:
Focus Group Protocol

Thank you for being willing to participate in this focus group session. My name is Dawn
Janke, and I direct the Writing and Rhetoric Center here on campus. In partial fulfillment of my
doctorate degree at University of Southern California, I am conducting a study on students’
writing education and experiences as well as your feelings about your development of writing
skills. Your responses during this focus group session will provide insight into how well the
university’s writing curriculum helps you reach the expected proficiency level of a college
graduate. The following questions are open-ended. Any and all of you are welcome to respond
to each question and/or to a peer’s response to a question.
1. How confident are you in your writing skills? (Follow-up: how do you know you are a
poor/skilled writer—what measures do you use to determine your skill level?)
2. What actions have you taken to improve them (e.g., classes, tutoring, other efforts)?
3. How important is it for you to be able to demonstrate advanced writing skills?
4. How have you used writing in internship experiences, or other professional experiences, and
how do you expect to use writing in your career?
5. How would you describe the commitment to writing education on campus? Put another way,
how would you describe the culture of writing on campus?
6. What importance, if any, do you believe administrators and faculty place on helping you to
improve your writing skills?
7. Can you share anything about your writing process (i.e., how do you go about completing a
writing task?)
8. Do you believe writing tasks should be completed individually or collaboratively? Why? Are
you comfortable sharing your writing with others?
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 234

9. Describe your experiences with instructors’ feedback on your writing at this institution—how
does it feel when you read instructors’ comments on your papers?
10. Do you ever feel labeled in any way based on your writing abilities?
11. In general, what are your beliefs about any negative/critical feedback of your writing? Do
you associate it with a failure in your writing process or in the product itself? From where do
you think those beliefs come?
12. How do you think your beliefs about failure affect your willingness to try new writing
strategies?
13. Can you share some of the settings (such as in classes, during office hours, with counselors
or other support persons) in which you recall being invited to reflect on your writing goals,
struggles, and/or achievements?
14. In what ways has reflection served as a learning tool in the writing classroom or other
settings?
15. Can you share any thoughts about how well you believe writing instruction on campus has
prepared you for academic success? Has your writing education prepared you for
professional and personal success? If so, in what ways?

FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 235

Appendix F:
Recruitment Letter – Classroom Observation Participation

DATE
Dear Colleague,
One of CSS’ stated learning objectives is “effective communication.” This means that
during their careers at CSS, students will develop writing skills that enable them to communicate
effectively in different contexts, both in and outside of CSS. The CSU established an upper-
division writing requirement, the Graduation Writing Assessment Requirement (GWAR), to
ensure students achieve this outcome. To determine if this objective is being met, Dawn Janke, a
doctoral candidate with the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California,
is conducting a study of students’ writing experiences across class standings.
One component of the study is to gather information during observations of lower- and
upper-division, writing-intensive courses. Your course has been identified for observation, and
while there are no direct benefits associated with participating in this study, insights gained
during observations of your course will assist the university in determining whether CSS
students are receiving effective and progressive writing education that helps them meet their
writing goals and the institution’s written communication expectations. Your teaching
performance will not be assessed and participation will remain anonymous thus will have no
impact on your career at CSS. You also may withdraw your agreement for observation at any
time.
Please reply to this email and confirm your agreement to observation of three of your
classes this term. You and your students will be invited to review and sign an Informed Consent
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 236

Sheet prior to the start of the first of the three class session observations. If any student declines
participation, the researcher will not observe your class.

FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 237

Appendix G:
Informed Consent/Information Sheet – Classroom Observation

University of Southern California
Rossier School of Education
3470 Trousdale Parkway
Los Angeles, CA 90089

INFORMED CONSENT FOR NON-MEDICAL RESEARCH – CLASSROOM OBSERVATIONS

FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY:
AN EVALUATION STUDY OF WRITING SKILLS AT CSS

You are invited to participate in a research study conducted by Dawn Janke, doctoral candidate
with the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education, and Dr. Jenifer
Crawford, Associate Professor of Clinical Education at the University of Southern California
Rossier School of Education, because you are a full-time student enrolled in a writing course at
CSS. Your participation is voluntary. You should read the information below and ask questions
about anything you do not understand before deciding whether to participate. Please take as
much time as you need to read the consent form. You may also decide to discuss participation
with your family or friends. If you decide to participate, you will be asked to sign this form. You
also will be given a copy of this form.

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The purpose of this project is to examine the knowledge, motivation, and organizational
influences that support students’ development of writing skills from their first year to graduation
and beyond.

STUDY PROCEDURES
If you volunteer to participate in this study, you will be agreeing to allow the researcher to be
present in three of your classroom sessions throughout the term and to incorporate statements
you make or activities in which you participate in observation notes. The researcher’s notes will
center on when and how writing is discussed during the classroom session as well as how
students engage in writing education during class.

The researcher’s observation notes will be typed on a state-issued laptop – instructor and student
identification will not be recognizable or detailed in the notes.

POTENTIAL RISKS AND DISCOMFORTS
There is no risk to loss of confidentiality associated with this study: no observation notes will
include instructor or student identifying information.

POTENTIAL BENEFITS TO PARTICIPANTS AND/OR TO SOCIETY
While there are no direct benefits associated with participating in this study, insights gained
during observations of the course will assist the university in determining whether CSS students
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 238

are receiving effective and progressive writing education that helps them meet their writing goals
and the institution’s written communication expectations.

PAYMENT/COMPENSATION FOR PARTICIPATION
There is no payment/compensation for agreeing to allow the researcher to observe classroom
sessions.

POTENTIAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST OF THE INVESTIGATOR
There are no financial considerations that compromise, or have the appearance of compromising,
the researcher’s professional judgment in proposing, conducting, supervising, or reporting
research. Because the primary researcher has a management position in which she coordinates a
portion of the writing curriculum at the institution at which she is conducting this study, she
does, however, have a direct interest in the results of the research.

CONFIDENTIALITY
Classroom observations will be typed and saved on a state-issued laptop. Data will be kept
indefinitely.

The primary researcher will keep classroom observation notes confidential as far as permitted by
law. However, if we are required to do so by law, we will disclose confidential information about
you. The members of the research team and the University of Southern California’s Human
Subjects Protection Program (HSPP) may access the data. The HSPP reviews and monitors
research studies to protect the rights and welfare of research subjects.

CERTIFICATE OF CONFIDENTIALITY
Any identifiable information obtained in connection with this study will remain confidential;
when the results of the research are published or discussed in conferences, no identifiable
information will be used.

PARTICIPATION AND WITHDRAWAL
Your agreement to allow observation of classroom sessions is voluntary. Your refusal to
participate will involve no penalty or loss of benefits to which you are otherwise entitled.
Specifically, your participation will have no impact on any of your writing course grades or your
career at the institution.

You may withdraw your consent at any time and discontinue participation without penalty. You
are not waiving any legal claims, rights or remedies because of your participation in this research
study.

INVESTIGATOR’S CONTACT INFORMATION
If you have any questions or concerns about the research, please feel free to contact Dawn Janke,
Principal Investigator (djanke@usc.edu; 805-459-0896; 3470 Trousdale Parkway Los Angeles,
CA 90089).

RIGHTS OF RESEARCH PARTICIPANT – IRB CONTACT INFORMATION
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 239

If you have questions, concerns, or complaints about your rights as a research participant or the
research in general and are unable to contact the research team, or if you want to talk to someone
independent of the research team, please contact the University Park Institutional Review Board
(UPIRB), 3720 South Flower Street #301, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0702, (213) 821-5272 or
upirb@usc.edu. You may also contact the CSS Institutional Review Board at (805) 756-1508 or
research@css.edu.

SIGNATURE OF RESEARCH PARTICIPANT

I have read the information provided above. I have been given a chance to ask questions. My
questions have been answered to my satisfaction, and I agree to participate in this study. I have
been given a copy of this form.

_________________________________________ __________________
Name of Participant Date

SIGNATURE OF INVESTIGATOR

I have explained the research to the participant and answered all of his/her questions. I believe
that he/she understands the information described in this document and freely consents to
participate.

_________________________________________ __________________
Name of Person Obtaining Consent Date

FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 240

Appendix H:
Observation Protocol

Date:
Course:
Course Location:
Course Time:
# of Students Present:

Amount of time in which the class session focused on writing instruction and/or activities:

Description of writing instruction (how the instructor facilitated the material, i.e. passive or
active methods of instruction):

Type(s) of writing activities in which students engaged in the class session:

Notes about students’ receptivity to and level of engagement with instruction and/or activities:

FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 241

Appendix I:
Research Analysis Plan

The following research analysis plan outlines how instrumentation, analysis methods, and
presentation of data related to the study’s specific questions. Note that while the study had three
specific research questions, in the plan below, the third question was broken down into sub-
questions in an attempt to discern more specifically which knowledge, motivation, and/or
organizational influences play a role in students’ writing performance and achievement. The
final row in the table below, though not a specific research question, is a culminating question
that brings together the Clark and Estes (2008) model with the study’s conceptual framework.

Research Question

Instrument
Potential Analysis
Method(s)
Potential Method
of Presentation
Q 1
To what extent does
CSS’ writing
curriculum help
students meet CSU
upper-division
proficiency
standards?
Survey
Focus groups
Observation
Document Analysis
Mean, SD
Coding
Coding
Coding

Table
Themes/patterns
Themes/patterns
Themes/patterns
Q 2
To what extent do
CSS students’
writing proficiency
levels influence the
achievement gap
and/or play a role in
students’ time to
graduation?

Institutional data Frequency, Mean, SD Table
Q 3-Knowledge
To what degree do
students have
knowledge of a
variety of writing
strategies?
Survey
Focus groups
Observation
Institutional data
Mean, SD
Coding
Coding
Mean
Table
Themes/patterns
Themes/patterns
Stacked bar graph
Q 3-Knowledge
To what degree do
students have
Survey
Focus groups
Observation
Mean, SD
Coding
Coding
Table
Themes/patterns
Themes/patterns
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 242

knowledge of
discipline-specific
writing
conventions?
Document analysis Coding Themes/patterns

Q 3-Knowledge
How do students
employ
metacognitive
awareness when
making rhetorical
choices based on
particular
situations?
Survey
Focus groups
Observation
Mean, SD
Coding
Coding
Table
Themes/patterns
Themes/patterns

Q 3-Motivation
For what purposes
do students set
writing goals?
Survey
Focus groups
Observation
Mean
Coding
Coding
Table
Themes/patterns
Themes/patterns
Q 3-Motivation
What role does
students’ self-
efficacy place in
their motivation to
develop writing
skills?
Survey
Focus groups
Observation
Mean, SD
Coding
Coding
Table
Themes/patterns
Themes/patterns

Q 3-Motivation
What value do
students place on
developing writing
skills for post-
degree
employability?
Survey
Focus groups
Observation
Mean, SD
Coding
Coding
Table
Themes/patterns
Themes/patterns

Q 3-Motivation
What value do
students place on
developing writing
skills for post-
degree citizenship?
Survey
Focus groups
Observation
Mean, SD
Coding
Coding
Table
Themes/patterns
Themes/patterns

Q 3-Organization
How does the
culture of writing on
campus influence
students’ writing
skills?
Survey
Focus groups
Observation
Document analysis
Institutional Data
Mean, SD
Coding
Coding
Coding
Mean, SD
Table
Themes/patterns
Themes/patterns
Themes/patterns
Stacked bar graph
Q 3-Organization
How does the
culture of error on
Survey
Focus groups
Observation
Mean, SD
Coding
Coding
Table
Themes/patterns
Themes/patterns
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 243

campus influence
students’ writing
skills?

Q 3-Organization
How does the
culture of self-
reflection on
campus influence
students’ writing
skills?
Survey
Focus groups
Observation
Mean, SD
Coding
Coding
Table
Themes/patterns
Themes/patterns

Q 3-Organization
How does the
culture of
achievement on
campus influence
students’ writing
skills?
Survey
Focus groups
Observation
Institutional data
Mean, SD
Coding
Coding
Mean
Stacked bar graph
Themes/patterns
Themes/patterns
Stacked bar graph
KMO with CF
In what ways do
students understand
critical literacy
skills to influence
their degree
attainment,
employability, and
citizenship?
Survey
Focus groups
Observation
Mean, SD
Coding
Coding
Pie chart
Themes/patterns
Themes/patterns

FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 244

Appendix J:
Evaluation Immediately Following a Course

Survey Items with a 4-point Likert Scale Rating
1. The instructor encouraged my participation in classroom activities. (Highly agree, Agree,
Disagree, Highly disagree) (Level 1 - Reaction, Engagement)
2. The classroom environment supported my writing development. (Highly agree, Agree,
Disagree, Highly disagree) (Level 1 - Reaction, Engagement)
3. During class, we discussed how to apply our writing skills in a variety of contexts.
(Highly agree, Agree, Disagree, Highly disagree) (Level 1 - Reaction, Relevance)
4. The writing knowledge and skills I learned in this course will help me perform duties and
responsibilities associated with my profession. (Highly agree, Agree, Disagree, Highly
disagree) (Level 1 - Reaction, Relevance)
5. This course provided helpful information. (Highly agree, Agree, Disagree, Highly
disagree) (Level 1 - Reaction, Satisfaction)
6. I will recommend this course to other students. (Highly agree, Agree, Disagree, Highly
disagree) (Level 1 - Reaction, Satisfaction)
7. After engaging in this course, I believe it will be worthwhile for me to apply what I
learned during the remainder of my time in college and beyond college. (Highly agree,
Agree, Disagree, Highly disagree) (Level 2 - Learning, Attitude)
8. I am confident that I can apply what I learned during this course to other courses and my
work beyond the classroom. (Highly agree, Agree, Disagree, Highly disagree) (Level 2 -
Learning, Confidence)
9. I am committed to applying what I learned during this course to other courses and my
work beyond the classroom. (Highly agree, Agree, Disagree, Highly disagree) (Level 2 -
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 245

Learning, Commitment)
Open-ended Questions
1. What about the course particularly encouraged and supported you as you developing your
writing knowledge and skills? (Level 1 - Reaction, Engagement)
2. What course material(s) or activity(ies) did you find most relevant to developing your
writing knowledge and skills? (Level 1 - Reaction, Relevance)
3. How, if in any way, could the course be improved? (Level 1 - Reaction, Satisfaction)
4. What are the major concepts about writing and rhetoric you learned during this course?
(Level 2 - Learning, Knowledge)
5. List at least three writing strategies you might deploy when writing to persuade others in
your discipline about a particular topic. (Level 2 - Learning, Skills)
6. Describe in a few sentences the importance of applying what you learned in this course to
other courses and your work beyond the classroom. (Level 2 - Learning, Attitude)
7. Describe in particular what, if any, course material(s) or activity(ies) have helped to
remove barriers so that you can apply what you learned in this course to other courses
and your work beyond the classroom. (Level 2 - Learning, Confidence)
8. Of the skills and strategies gained during the course, what do you anticipate applying
first, or which do you see as the most useful? (Level 2 - Learning, Commitment)

FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 246

Appendix K:
Blended Evaluation Delayed for a Period After Course Completion

Survey Items with a 4-point Likert-Scale Rating
1. I have experienced at least one instance in which I was expected to apply what I learned
in the course. (Highly agree, Agree, Disagree, Highly disagree) (Level 1 - Reaction,
Relevance)
2. In hindsight, the course was a valuable addition to my degree program. (Highly agree,
Agree, Disagree, Highly disagree) (Level 1 - Reaction, Satisfaction)
3. I have successfully applied in my classes and/or a professional context what I learned
during the course. (Highly agree, Agree, Disagree, Highly disagree) (Level 3 - Behavior)
4. I have the necessary writing knowledge and skills to succeed in personal, professional,
and civic contexts. (Highly agree, Agree, Disagree, Highly disagree) (Level 3 - Behavior)
5. The course gave me confidence to apply my writing skills in a variety of contexts.
(Highly agree, Agree, Disagree, Highly disagree) (Level 3 - Behavior)
6. My instructor encouraged me to set goals for the course at the outset of the semester.
(Highly agree, Agree, Disagree, Highly disagree) (Level 3 - Required Drivers)
7. I received support in order to apply what I learned in the course successfully. (Highly
agree, Agree, Disagree, Highly disagree) (Level 3 - Required Drivers)
8. I am seeing positive results from the knowledge and skills I gained in the course.(Highly
agree, Agree, Disagree, Highly disagree) (Level 4 - Results, Leading Indicators)
9. I have increased confidence because of the knowledge and skills I gained in the course.
(Highly agree, Agree, Disagree, Highly disagree) (Level 4 - Results, Leading Indicators)
10. My writing knowledge and skills have advanced because of my time and effort in the
course. (Highly agree, Agree, Disagree, Highly disagree) (Level 4 - Results, Leading
FROM COLLEGE READINESS TO GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY 247

Indicators)
11. The course positively impacted my time to degree attainment and employability post
graduation. (Highly agree, Agree, Disagree, Highly disagree) (Level 4 - Results, Desired
Results)
Open-ended Questions
1. What writing knowledge and skills from the course have been most relevant to your
educational and career aspirations? (Level 1 - Reaction, Relevance)
2. What, if anything, would you recommend that the instructor change about the course?
(Level 1 - Reaction, Satisfaction)
3. How have you recently used the writing knowledge and skills you learned in the course?
(Level 3 - Behavior)
4. What, if any, challenges are you experiencing when attempting to apply the writing
knowledge and skills in your current context? (Level 3 - Behavior)
5. What other writing knowledge and skills do you need in order to perform successfully in
your current situation, whether in other classes or your profession? (Level 3 - Behavior,
Required Drivers)
6. Please give an example of a sign of success or positive outcome you have experienced
that may be the result of your time and effort in the course (e.g., a passing score on the
Graduation Writing Assessment Requirement, successful completion of the senior
project, decreased time to degree attainment, or improved employability). (Level 4 -
Results, Leading Indicators)

Abstract (if available)

Abstract The overall purpose of this study was to understand students' experiences with writing and writing education at a predominantly undergraduate university within the California State University system in an effort to determine how well the institution was responding to students' college readiness in English and guiding them towards degree attainment, employability, and civic engagement. The researcher investigated the following questions: to what extent the institution's curriculum helps students meet CSU upper-division writing proficiency standards

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Asset Metadata

Creator Janke, Dawn Marie (author)

Core Title From college readiness to graduate employability and active citizenry: an evaluation study of writing skills at CSS

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Organizational Change and Leadership (On Line)

Publication Date 02/08/2018

Defense Date 01/16/2018

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag civic engagement,college composition,college readiness,degree attainment,employability,OAI-PMH Harvest,writing education,writing skills

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Crawford, Jenifer (committee chair), Goen-Salter, Sugie (committee member), Tierney, William (committee member)

Creator Email dawnjanke@ymail.com,djanke@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-470938

Unique identifier UC11266939

Identifier etd-JankeDawnM-6022.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-470938 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-JankeDawnM-6022.pdf

Dmrecord 470938

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Janke, Dawn Marie

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA