Feedback from RNF at CCCC

I’ve been meaning to post for awhile, now (four months, to be exact!). Last April I attended the Research Network Forum at 4Cs as a work-in-progress presenter, in the hopes of developing a viable project out of my beginning forays into assessment literature. Now that I have the time to pursue projects that aren’t directly related to my coursework, I’d like to briefly summarize some of the feedback I received and develop a tentative plan of action for pursuing a research project using my assessment literature.

The two project ideas that I came home with from discussions with my generous and knowledgeable session-mates was to consider pursuing annotated bibliographies on particular subjects for the Journal of Writing Assessment, or (as my WPA table suggested) develop a whitepaper that distills down best practices and essential resources for specific contexts and exigencies facing WPAs (who are always in a time crunch!).

Some suggested contexts for such a whitepaper or annotated bibliography included: assessing portfolios, proficiency exams/placement, connection between writing assignments, basic writing, assessing multimodal assignments, rubrics, responding to student writing, professional writing courses, and special populations (e.g., non-traditional students).

I hope to make some headway on one of these project ideas in the coming months, before the start of term (late September for us, as UC is on the quarter system). Stay tuned for more, and in the interim, I’d welcome any other suggestions for contexts/topics.

Calculating sample size

I recently came across the following websites for calculating sample size:

http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm
http://www.raosoft.com/samplesize.html

Caveat is that I haven’t used either, but they may prove useful to anyone unsure of what a proper sample size is when assessing N students.