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From fall 2007 to spring 2009, the UH Writing Mentors Program has reached approximately 1,300 students across 70 sections of English 100. Writing Mentors, who are graduate students in English, attend class and hold individual writing conferences with all students outside of class. For many first-year students, these mentors are the only university representative who learns their name, background, interests, academic goals, challenges in transitioning to college, and strengths and weaknesses as a writer. The initiative has received rankings of “satisfied” or “very satisfied” from 89% of students, 94% of mentors, and 98% of instructors; furthermore 85% of first-year students surveyed claimed that their mentor helped them in their transition to college. Program administrators have engaged in multiple forms of assessment including the following: a large-scale scoring of first-year student writing that demonstrated mentored students out-performing their non-mentored counterparts in statistically significantly ways in the categories of content, organization, language & style, and meta-cognition/ reflective ability; standardized logs tracking every mentor-student conference; analysis of longitudinal data on how mentored versus non-mentored students perform as writers and students post-English 100; interviews with focus groups of mentors, students, and instructors; and written end-of-semester evaluations from all participants. Our poster will summarize key results of these assessment activities and highlight the ways in which they have led to a) programmatic improvements each semester; b) peer-reviewed publications in the fields of Composition Studies and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), each of which underscore the role of mentoring in student retention; c) arguments for continued funding.

Increasing First-Year Students’ (Writing) Success: An Assessment of the UH Writing Mentors Program

From fall 2007 to spring 2009, the UH Writing Mentors Program has reached approximately 1,300 students across 70 …

This study evaluates team teaching models of a new curriculum adopted by the University of Hawai`i's journalism program in 2004. In this new media convergence curriculum, students learn all media formats — print, video and online — and do not specialize only in traditional media, such as newspaper or TV journalism. Instructors team teach so that students will learn a holistic approach to storytelling in which knowledge and skills from the different specialties are integrated. The assessment of the models focused on the first three cohorts of students, from 2004 to 2007. In the models, degrees of faculty collaboration varied depending on course level and student learning outcomes. Students in first-year basic journalism classes benefited from a lower level of faculty collaboration than those in second-year classes where advanced multimedia skills and holistic, integrated thinking were needed — i.e. an ability to "see the big picture." The study suggests that team teaching and teaching media convergence go hand-in-hand.

Assessing a New Journalism Curriculum: Evaluating Team-Teaching Models in a Media Convergence Curriculum 2004-2007

This study evaluates team teaching models of a new curriculum adopted by the University of Hawai`i’s journalism program …

Report & Plan Use of Results

Congratulations are in order if you have finished evaluating evidence of student learning or completing compiling perceptions of …