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Articles Conference Reviews |
ReviewedByJoelWingardSession A. 7: “WAC and Quantitative Reasoning: Curriculum Breadth, Improved Learning and Innovative Assessment.” Reviewed by Joel Wingard jwingard@moravian.edu This session reported on the extension of assessment from WAC to courses involving quantitative reasoning at Carleton College. The first speaker, Carol Rutz, described briefly what has been previously published about the faculty development model that effected curricular change in WAC at Carleton. Carleton students must satisfy a WAC requirement by taking a “writing rich” course in the disciplines and by submitting a sophomore portfolio; there is no composition course requirement there. Two of the requirements for the portfolio involve writing that uses quantitative reasoning to interpret data. But a question emerged about student avoidance of courses involving quantitative reasoning, despite the portfolio requirements that mandate at least two papers from courses where such thinking is involved. In response, Carleton developed a rubric for measuring quantitative reasoning in student writing, and they are trying to develop more assignments that ask students to think this way, even in courses that are not traditionally “quantitative-based.” The second speaker was John Bean, of Seattle University. He has been a consultant to Carleton faculty trying to develop assignments that involve quantitative reasoning on students’ parts, what Bean called “rhetorical numeracy” assignments and other assignments, perhaps more complex than the typical writing-to-learn emphasis of many verbal reasoning assignments in mathematics. He said that these assignments produced more sophisticated, rhetorically rich writing from students. Speaker 3 was Scott Bierman of Carleton College, who described in more detail the curricular efforts linking quantitative reasoning and WAC that Rutz and Bean touched upon. He told how Carleton faculty discussed ways of getting more quantitative reasoning into assignments for students. He said there was a concern that students be able to read an article involving numerical data from, say, The New York Times and make sense of the material. An additional concern was preparing students for graduate and professional work that would involve quantitative reasoning. Carleton faculty began to think about “quantitative reasoning across-the-curriculum” as part of the writing-across-the-curriculum program in place. A FIPSE grant helped faculty – especially those in fields other than math or the natural sciences – to develop writing assignments and course units that did involve quantitative reasoning, as Rutz and Bean had mentioned. Then, Carleton officials developed a rubric for scoring students’ ability to incorporate quantitative reasoning in their writing. About 75 people attended this session, which, for me, offered not much that I didn’t know before. Not to toot my own horn, but I had been familiar with WAC at Carleton already, and I knew Bean’s Engaging Ideas from my own work in faculty development workshops for WAC at my institution. Still, I found it comforting to be reminded of how the relatively small and homogeneous faculty typical of a small liberal arts college can work together to solve curricular needs through writing-across-the-curriculum, and how that kind of faculty involvement can extend beyond writing assessment per se to the assessment of quantitative reasoning in writing as well. Comments? |