ASC Webinar Transcripts

Presented Wednesday May 24, 2017

View the recording

Last updated 8/8/2017

 

Visual: Slide opens with “Two Polls” and display synchronous polls given during the webinar.

Audio: Melanie: Now let's start talking about how to complete your doctoral writing assessment requirement. We're going to start out today with two polls. We're interested in your feedback on our two poll questions. And, so, the first poll has been posted. And the question is, it's a statement, actually, the most important assessment question for me to have answered right now is... And please select from the following. I understand you might want all of those questions answered. We're asking which one is most important to you right now. And this poll is anonymous. We can see only the number of people who are selecting each item. We cannot see your name associated with whichever item you select.

And I see some people have just joined us. If you have just joined us, we have a poll open asking you for the most important assessment question to have answered right now. We'll leave this open for another ten seconds. All right. Great. Thank you.

And let's take a look at those results. All right. It looks like if the results are showing, it looks as though the most -- the top question concerns tips for writing the essay, followed by how folks will benefit from this assessment, and then the other questions are also ones that have interested specific people on the call we'll make sure to address your questions as we go along. Thank you.

And now we have one more poll. Our second poll concerns how you're feeling about this assessment right now. When I think of the doctoral writing assessment, I feel this response more than the others listed. And there's quite a range of responses there. Which one would you say describes how you're feeling about the assessment? And, again, this poll like the previous poll is anonymous. And you're able to enter your answer without your name showing. We'll leave this open another five seconds. Okay.

Why don't we go ahead and end the poll and take a look at those results. All right. Curious leads the pack. And that's understandable. We are here to help with your curiosity. With people also feeling anxious, so we will hope to soothe your anxiety today. And some of the other answers also represented as well. Great.

Well, thank you for sharing your feedback here at the beginning of our webinar. I'm going to turn the presentation over now to my colleague, Dena Easton. Dena is operations manager for writing assessments here in the Academic Skills Center. And I'll be back with you later on during the presentation and be answering questions behind the scenes as well. There you go, Dena.

Visual: Slide changes to “Doctoral Writing Assessment: Purpose & goal”- and lists the purpose and the goals.

Audio: Dena: Thank you, Melanie. Hoping everyone can hear me just fine. We're going to try to ease and answer some of the curiosity that everyone has around the writing assessment. The first thing I want to share is the purpose and goal of the doctoral writing assessment. The purpose is that it will give you support to meet the university's expectations for writing in course work. And our goal is to help you apply stronger writing skills in courses leading up to your capstone research. This will extend across the university and help you by providing more support as you go through your program to make sure you successfully complete your doctorate.

Visual: Slide changes to  “Doctoral Writing Assessment: Benefits” and includes a graphic that lists benefits like strengthening writing, applying and practice strategies, develop stronger writing skills and habits.

Audio: Dena: Some of the doctoral writing assessment benefits that we have for you is having the writing assessment in the second term allows you to focus on your program and learn the classroom setting in your first term. It's an ability to refresh your skills and foundations and then take the assessment following that to support your progress throughout the rest of your doctorate program. As you can see on the slide, it will help you identify and strengthen your writing needs. You'll be able to apply and practice writing strategies. Develop stronger writing skills and habits. As well as build confidence in your writing skills leading up to the capstone stage.

Visual: Slide changes to “How to Complete Your Doctoral Writing Assessment Requirement” and lists 3 steps,

Audio: Dena: There are three steps in completing your doctoral writing assessment requirement. The first thing I want to mention is that the doctoral writing requirement is required in your second term, and it is not a course that can be dropped. The first step is going to be exploring the classroom setting, which is the DRWA-8000 and 8001G sections that you will see appear in your student course list. This is taken, again, the second term. It is worth 0 credits and it is a free assessment. The second step will be writing your essay in Word and uploading it to the assignment area of the DRWA course shell. The third step is completing your required or recommended writing support beginning the start date after you receive your assessment essay score. And now we'll be discussing each of these steps in a little bit more detail.

Visual: Slide changes to “Step 1: Explore your DRWA-8000G/8001G Doctoral Writing Assessment course” and includes images of Blackboard classroom including where announcements are located.

Audio: Dena:  In step 1, we are asking everyone to explore their classroom. When you have access to it. So tomorrow you will all have access to view your DRWA classroom. Please check out the announcement link on your classroom for an overview of information on the prompt and word count requirements. Do not submit anything at this time since we are only allowing submissions starting on day one of the course. So, like I said, this will show you where the announcement link is and where the information will pop up under announcements.

Visual: Slide changes to “Step 1: Explore your DRWA-8000G/8001G Doctoral Writing Assessment course” and includes images of Blackboard classroom including where assignments are located.

Audio: Dena: DRWA does not have any discussions or reading requirements. There's only one essay that needs to be submitted by the due date for review. Please make sure that you follow the prompt and instructions that are listed in the course. So, when you click on the assignment link, you will be brought to general overview of what is required and when the due date is for your essay. And then you can also click on the submission and grading information where you will be able to review the grading information and rubric that will help you prepare your essay.

Visual: Slide changes to “Step 2: Write & submit your assessment essay in Assignment area of DRWA-8000G/8001G” and includes images of Blackboard classroom including assignment guidelines.

Audio: Dena: Step 2 is actually writing and submitting your assessment essay in the assignment area of the classroom. Keep in mind essay is due by day seven of week 2. In the directions, you will see that you do not write your name on your essay. This is an anonymous essay and it's reviewed anonymously. Therefore, our assessors will not see your names. They will just look at the naming convention that's listed in the classroom. You can also submit your essay multiple times but the assessors will only review the last submission. Again, the grading criteria and rubric can be viewed so you know what the assessors are scoring on.

Visual: Slide changes to “Step 2: Write & submit your assessment essay in Assignment area of DRWA-8000G/8001G” and includes images of Blackboard classroom including assignment submission.

Audio: Dena: As stated before, you can submit multiple times up until the deadline, which is day seven week 2. It's important to remember only the last submission is scored and no late submissions will be permitted. Please be sure to submit early to make sure that you are meeting the deadlines.

Visual: Slide changes to “Step 2: Write & submit your assessment essay in Assignment area of DRWA-8000G/8001G” and includes images of Blackboard classroom including assignment submission.

Audio: Dena: There are links to upload your document when you click on the assignment. And make sure you follow the naming convention that we have mentioned earlier. And it's also listed in the directions. The link closes once the deadline passes, and we cannot accept late submissions or replace essays that have been uploaded. Again, one more time. Only the last upload will be scored. So make sure that that is the one that you want to be assessed.

Visual: Slide changes to “Step 3: Complete required or recommended writing support: and includes flow charts on assessment scores. 

Audio: Dena: Once the assignments are all submitted by the end of week 2, our assessment -- assessor team will go in, review and score all essays. The final scores will be sent out via e-mail from our team when the course closes. These e-mails will include your assessment score, a brief explanation, if there are follow-up courses that need to be covered or taken or additional resources that we have available to you. As you can see, scores receiving a 4 or 5, there will be no course required. And you will be sent instructional resources via the Writing Center website. Those receiving an assessment essay score of 3 will be required to take graduate writing 1. And those receiving a 0, 1, 2 or a 99 score will be required to take both graduate writing 1 and graduate writing 2. Both of these courses allow you the opportunity to apply what you learn directly into your program courses.

I'm going to turn our conversation back over to Melanie Brown to explain the courses and resource availability in more detail.

Audio: Melanie: Great. Thank you, Dena. And we also had some really good questions behind the scenes. Want to reiterate, answers to those questions. One person asked, will there be any other assignments in the doc writing assessment DRWA classroom? No. As Dena mentioned, there are no other discussions, no readings, the only assignment is that one essay that you'll upload according to the steps that she described in her part of the presentation a few moments ago.

I want to mention here on this slide concerning scores and recommended or required support that you will receive, in terms of feedback, your score and you will see the rubric. So you will know how you scored in each category of the rubric but not track changes or specific comments on everyone's essay.

Visual: Slide changes to “Doctoral writing assessment: Required writing courses” and includes information about the courses.  

Audio: Melanie: And, so, if you are required to complete courses as part of this assessment, those courses will be graduate writing 1 and/or graduate writing 2. So we wanted to give you a bit of information about these classes. Graduate writing 1 is focused on foundational aspects of writing. The writing process, organizing your paragraphs, summarizing ideas, reading critically.

On top of that foundation comes graduate writing 2. That course is focused on higher order issues in writing. Paraphrasing, analyzing ideas, synthesizing ideas, which means to combine ideas, evaluating sources. So you can see that either these courses together or simply graduate writing 2 either way will provide you a strong foundation for writing and the critical thinking skills you'll need as you move on throughout your doctoral program.

Let's provide a bit more background here on the next steps in completing these courses. So, these required writing courses are free, as is the DRWA course. The only instance in which one of these required writing courses is not free is if you complete a free writing course but you do not pass it, you receive a "U" grade. "U" stands for unsatisfactory. These courses are graded satisfactory, which is an "S" grade, or unsatisfactory, which is a "U" grade. If you receive a "U" grade in your free writing course, you do have to enroll in that course again and this time you will have to pay $195 tuition to take the course again. We expect, we hope, that no one will fail the course.

Certainly the course is designed for you to learn skills for students who need the skills to learn them and to pass the course. We don't want anyone having to take the course that requires payment.

And, so, let's move through those balloons on the right side of the screen. The second balloon reads, your first required writing course begins on the start date after DRWA. That means your first required writing course will begin after your DRWA course ends. And we will have correspondence for you via e-mail very clearly specifying the date on which your required writing course will start.

Just like the DRWA course, these graduate writing courses cannot be dropped. You may, however, submit a petition one time to defer one of your required writing courses by one term. And I want to clarify this because students often have questions about this policy. You cannot delay or defer the DRWA course that Dena described earlier. You may, however, petition once to defer one of your required writing courses on this slide. But you may only receive approval for that petition one time. So if you're required to complete two of these courses, the writing courses, you can petition only to delay one of them by only one term. And we do have a rationale here. The goal is for students who test into these courses to receive the writing support provided by these courses as early as possible in their programs. The idea is not to tell you in your second term, you know, you'd really benefit by taking these classes, but then for students to wait a year to take those classes. We want students to complete the classes as soon as possible so that you can begin to reap the benefits and start practicing different writing strategies for greater success as soon as possible.

And, finally, the last bullet -- the last balloon listed on that slide, students must satisfactorily complete all required writing courses within a year after receiving your DRWA assessment score or academic dismissal applies. So, this is an important part of the assessment. You know, our goal is to provide students the writing support they need to succeed at Walden and then on the student's part, you go ahead and complete the courses which are free and you complete them with a satisfactory "S" grade.

But students who fail the courses two times or students who don't get them finished keep delaying the courses will be dismissed from the university. And, again, our goal is to provide the support that students need during that first year of study.

Visual: Slide changes to “Doctoral writing assessment: Resources” and includes website links.

Audio: Melanie: On this slide, want to point you to a few really helpful resources that you can look at your leisure as you begin preparing for the writing assessment. At the top of the list is the writing assessment website, and if you haven't visited there, I encourage you to do so. And these links, in addition to being in the slides, are also included in the pod at the bottom of your screen marked "DRWA links." You can also click right out to these websites from that pod. On the website, you will find the other resources listed on the slide.

The second resource is the frequently asked questions area. We have answers to more than 40 questions that students commonly ask us on all aspects of the writing assessment. So I encourage you to check out the frequently asked questions area, skim through the questions. You can click on any question to read its answer.

Please also take a look at the third resource, tips for writing your assessment essay. These tips are so helpful. They'll explain to you ways that you can approach writing your assessment essay while you're in the DRWA course. And the tips include resources available in Walden's Writing Center. So you'll really be able to apply what you find on that tips sheet directly to your essay.

And, finally, the last resource listed on this slide is a video of Walden's chief academic officer, Dr. Eric Riedel, discussing the importance and the benefits and value of writing an assessment, particularly in doctoral program.

Visual: Slide changes to “Two Polls” and display synchronous polls given during the webinar.

Audio: Melanie: Well, here we are towards the end of our presentation. And certainly we see questions in the question box and we want to be able to answer everyone's question and share some of the more common questions aloud to everyone.

First, though, let us wrap up with two more polls and I'll ask Shawn to go ahead and launch that first poll. And we'll see where everybody is standing right now, how people are feeling right now. Okay. And, so, right now, at this point, having heard the presentation, the information you just heard, the most important assessment question for you to have answered right now is... Blank. Of those questions, please select which best fits -- which answer best fits your thoughts right now. And I know we had about half of the people currently on this call came in after we began. So, it might be that some folks have different questions and we're happy to make sure everyone has their questions answered. It's great to see so many people joining us today. And we'll leave this slide, the poll will be open another 10 seconds. All right. Okay. Why don't we go ahead, Shawn, and close that poll. And take a look at the responses. All right.

So, more than half feel -- of the folks on the call feel as though you know the answers to all the questions above. That's great. I want to be able to address the other questions for people who haven't had these answers yet. Where can you find tips for writing your essay? In the box immediately beneath this poll, these slides, is a pod called "DRWA links." In there you can click "writing assessment home page." That will send you to our doctoral writing assessment website, and on that site you'll find on the home page a link called "writing the assessment essay." That's where the tips for writing the assessment essay are located. And also they're in this slide deck as well. I just mentioned on the previous slide of resources, want to make sure everybody knows where to find the writing tips for this essay requirement. You can go right to that assessment website and click on "writing the assessment essay." You'll find the tips there.

Another question a few people had, why is this assessment required? This assessment is required because over the years we have seen students in the doctoral programs struggle as they went through their more advanced course work and then by the time they reached that dissertation stage, we've seen students take a lot longer than really they needed to take and the problem was skill level for a lot of students. If we can help students address writing and build their skills and strong writing habits earlier in their programs, then by the time you reach the dissertation stage, writing is less of an obstacle or it is not at all an obstacle by the time you get up to that point. You're going to have so much to do with your research, with your content, reading articles for your literature review, that we don't want you also to be encumbered by writing issues.

So, this assessment is required for everybody in the doctoral programs in their second term so that we can identify students who need support and then we can deliver that support in a timely way. It's really designed to help people succeed. Help students succeed throughout their program.

A couple people had questions on when is my assessment essay due? And it will be due at the end of the second week of your DRWA course. And we're also going to send e-mails to you this week and once a week, the first week of your course and the second week of your course, you'll receive plenty of e-mails from us reminding you of your specific essay due date.

And, finally, a few folks had a question, how will I benefit from this assessment? And we do have, for folks who arrived late, the third slide in this deck concerns benefits of this assessment for you, and they include learning strategies and writing tips early in your program so that you can practice and apply them in your courses leading up to the capstone, up to the dissertation stage, and then that way you're arriving at that dissertation stage with greater confidence in your writing skills and I hope in your research skills, which you will have learned in your content courses as you go along in your program as well. Great.

I wanted to make sure we could answer some of those questions. Why don't we go to the second poll, Shawn. All right. When I think of the doctoral writing assessment, I feel this response more than the others listed. And I spy that this one has a text box, which is great, so you go ahead and type in answers, how do you feel about the writing assessment at this point and you're welcome to go ahead and type in your answer there. Again, this answer is anonymous. So we cannot and do not connect a name to an answer, just the answers pop up. So we want to make sure we can have a sense of how you're feeling now that we've shared some of the details about how to complete this requirement with you. Okay. And I want to mention, too, as we go along that you're welcome to type in questions if you still have them in the Q & A box and we'll shift over, make sure all of your questions are answered as well. Why don't we leave this poll open for another ten seconds. So if you have an answer you'd like to type, go right ahead and do so. And then we'll shift over to some questions. Okay. Why don't we wrap up the poll. And I'll skim through some of these.

Some folks are sharing that they feel informative, prepared, confident, organized, excited. Confident that it will be a good course, completed quickly with prompt feedback to ensure we are ready as we move through the program. That is correct. Great. Let's see. And a reminder that you will receive -- you'll complete your essay by the end of week 2 and you will receive your score via e-mail from our team at the end of week 4, right after the course ends. And that's because the assessors are going through and assessing everybody's essays, you know, there are many students in the doc writing assessment and, so, the assessors need time to assess each essay. And that the feedback will be the rubric and your score, providing that feedback on your work.

Let's see. And then some folks are concerned about the timeline. You know, concerned about conflict with the specific due date. If it's possible, you do have the two weeks to write the paper, and you can upload it at any time in those two weeks. This is a 250-word personal reflection essay. So beginning day one of your course, you can go ahead and start writing it and upload your final essay any time as long as you upload it by day 7 of week 2. Within that timeline. And then the course is designed in the interest of consistency and fairness for all students who are getting -- who have to meet the deadline, it's designed not to accept late submissions. That's just how the course has been set up. So you do want to make sure that sometime between day one of week one and day seven of week two, in those 14 days you upload the 250-word essay. And I do hope, since it's a reflection essay, a personal essay, 250 words, that you'll feel a bit more at ease about writing it.

Let's see. But I know, some folks still wrote that they are nervous, they're feeling a bit stressed. And I do want to encourage you to take a deep breath and go ahead and write that essay, let it sit, and come back to it perhaps later that day or the next day to look at it with a fresh perspective and then when you're ready, you can upload it before the end of week two. Okay.

And then concern that some people, you know, feel like I think that it will be a waste of time because I know, I've had strong grades in my master's program, had strong grades in my first PhD class. Well, it's a reflective essay, 250 words on a personal topic that the prompt is listed in the classroom, it will take time, but it will not -- it certainly isn't the work load of a regular course, and it's worth it, you know, for having fulfilled this requirement to the best of your ability, and then if your writing skills are strong, then you have -- you'll pass the assessment and you'll receive in your -- everyone, with your score e-mail will receive information from the Writing Center directing you to specific resources that will be helpful to you based on your score. This includes for writers who receive a score of a 4 or a 5.

You know, people with writing skills such that they don't need the additional support of the writing courses but all writers, all writers, strong writers included, can always use additional resources and support, especially in a doctoral program. And I'm a lifelong English major. My master's degree is in English and my PhD is in English, and I still appreciate resources and I can still use resources to help polish my skills in writing. So, if you do end up not required to complete any of the courses because you received a 4 or a 5 on your assessment, please don't simply dismiss the Writing Center out of hand feeling like, well, I have strong grades, and I already know I can write well, the bar continues to climb. The standards get that much higher the farther you go in your doctoral program. And certainly by the time you reach that dissertation stage, even if you wrote a master's thesis or if you didn't write a thesis for your master's and you wrote papers instead, you'll still find a lot of benefit from writing support in the Writing Center. And, so, I strongly encourage you not to just sort of dismiss this assessment out of hand as a waste of time. There's actually a lot of value to be gained for all -- writers of all skill levels in this assessment.

Visual: Slide changes to “Webinar recording & email support”- and includes information about when the recording will be posted, and how to email the DRWA assessment team.  

Audio: Melanie: All right. Shawn, we can shut down the poll. And this is our final slide and just wanted to be able to point out for you the ways -- the different resources available and our contact information. Again, you will have an e-mail recording out -- with the recording link, sorry, for this presentation, so you can listen to this presentation or parts of it at any time.

You can also e-mail us at any time at this e-mail address, writingassessment@mail.waldenu.edu. Before we leave and before I ask you to fill out our short four-question survey, I want to check to see if there are any questions in the question box that I can answer for folks or that Dena might be able to answer. I'm going to go on mute. Dena, do you want to shift over and let me know some of the questions?

Audio: Dena: Sure. I have been trying to answer everybody's questions as they're coming in. But they do come in quite fast. So if I missed yours, I apologize and you can retype it in the Q & A section. We did receive quite a few questions on APA requirements, citations being needed, things around the essay word count. I do want to reiterate that this is a personal reflection essay based on a writing prompt that you will see in the classroom. The 250 words is a general guideline. There is not a -- you will not be penalized if you go over 250 words. But I want to make sure everyone realizes that our assessors are only required to read the first 250 words if your essay is very long. So do keep that in mind when writing, make sure that you try to summarize and make it succinct as possible.

We did get quite a few questions on when the essay is due or when the scores will be received. As a reminder, the essays are due by day 7 of week 2. It was pointed out that this course will actually be starting on a Tuesday because Monday is a holiday. But the day 7 of week 2 is still considered that Sunday of the second week. So please keep that in mind. The scores will be sent out after the course closes. So the course is a four-week course. The essays are due by the end of week 2. And the assessors are scoring for week 3 and 4. Once the course closes on day 7 of week 4, we will begin sending out the score e-mails. And any follow-up actions that are needed.

We had quite a few questions as well on any tips, and as Melanie had covered as well, there are links under the DRWA links box that's in the center bottom of your screen. There are links to the Academic Skills Center, which has some great resources as well as the Writing Center, but I would definitely check out the writing assessment page as well for tips on writing your essay, as well as the frequently asked questions that has many questions that have been asked since we have launched the writing assessment that you may find very helpful. I'm going to turn this over to Melanie, as she has some additional answers.

Audio: Melanie: That's great, thank you, Dena. And I've been answering a few questions in the question box as well as Dena has been speaking. One question, a few questions have come up in this vein, how critical are the assessors in the grading of the essays? And I want to mention that the assessors score the essays, technically they assign a score of 0 to 5, they don't grade them per se, but I understand the spirit of the question, how critical are they. The assessors review your essay according to three categories. You'll find in the classroom that the rubric the assessors use is available right in the classroom so you can see exactly what they're going to be looking for in your essay. And those three categories that they review for are clarity of central idea, organization, and grammar.

So those are the three broad topics -- or three writing categories they're looking for in your essay. That's why some people had asked, do I have to have outside sources, do I have to cite my sources in APA style, because it's a personal reflection essay, you are not required to have research in this paper. And APA is not one of the categories that this assessment measures. And the reason for that, and I know Dena touched on this earlier, the reason for that is that you're going to use APA and you'll learn it more as you go through your program at Walden.

Not everyone at Walden who came out of your master's program, whatever your master's is in, your degree, not everyone already used APA. Certainly I mentioned my master's degree is in English, I used MLA. I used a different publication style. When I began working at Walden, I had to learn APA. And if anybody gave me a test on APA during my second term, you know, my third month or so on the job, I would have failed that test because I didn't know APA well enough to be tested on it just a few months into my work with Walden. And it's the same thing for you. You may not ever have seen APA before coming to Walden, so it wouldn't be fair at all for us to assess you on it right now. But it is fair for us to assess, you know, incoming doctoral students on how well they write in terms of clarity of central idea, organization, and grammar because those are three aspects of writing that are applicable no matter what program you're in, no matter what context you're writing in.

And this is a personal essay, not a research essay, because of work load, we recognize that you're already busy, you might be attending residency, you might be taking one or two other -- you certainly are taking one or two other classes here at Walden. The goal here is for us to have a sense of your current writing skills and ways that in foundational aspects you need help and then we're here to provide that help. It really is -- as I mentioned earlier, the goal is to help you succeed by giving you these tools and these strategies as early as possible in your program. Let's see.

And one question that came up, aside from this essay, where can we go at Walden for APA guidelines? And you can go to the Writing Center website. I can -- okay. I'm going to go get that link for you right now. Bear with me one moment. I'm just going to go to the website and get that for you and then I'm going to post it. Here you go. [ Melanie typing ]

Okay. I've posted a link in the question and answer box and I aimed to post it to everybody so you should be able to see it. It's the Writing Center APA style instruction area of the Walden Writing Center website. Although you do not require APA for this essay, I think it's important for you to know where to find support in APA anyhow because you will require APA in your other courses. And students will often ask what percentage of students pass the assessment. And it really varies according to the given cohort. How many students do or don't, it depends on, you know, so many variables of the incoming students, the extent to which they've already had stronger writing training during their master's program or not. Many students don't and some students do. And, so, this is a new assessment that we've rolled out this year so we're still getting data, you know, still trying to determine how many students are succeeding. But I would say by estimate, half. I would say about half the students pass out of the writing courses entirely and half the students pass into the writing courses, test into those courses either one course or two courses. And then complete those courses and almost to a person go into the writing courses -- we've seen this happen again and again since we rolled out this requirement.

Students go in feeling a variety of feelings. Some students feel frustrated that they tested into the writing courses. Some students feel angry that they tested into the writing courses. Some students feel grateful because they know they need the writing support and it's free. But when students come out on the other side of the course, at the end of those eight weeks, almost to a person, everybody is relieved and grateful that they were required to take the class. Because they'll even say in their evaluations, I didn't think I needed this course, but now that I'm done with it, I realize I needed this course. Because for some students, they might say, yeah, some of the material was already familiar to me, but some of it wasn't. And I got some really good tips that I can take out of here and it was a free class. You know? So we really see a transformation of students as they go through. We also have students who receive a score of 4 or 5, which means they are not required to complete any of the courses, but they e-mail us and ask if they can take the courses anyway because, you know, although they are identified as having stronger writing skills, they know that they need practice and a refresher is a good thing, too. You know?

And, so, students will ask us outright if they can take the courses. And we'll offer individual recommendations to them as well. So, I really want to emphasize that testing into these courses really is not negative. It really is designed for your success. These are great questions. I am looking through. I think we've answered every question.

Question, if you don't pass out of the courses, what is included in the courses you have to take? And this is in an earlier slide. We talked about graduate writing 1, focusing on the foundational aspects, writing process, critical reading, organization, summary. Graduate writing 2 focusing on the higher order issues of summary, paraphrasing, synthesis, analysis, evaluation. And we also have information -- in fact, I can go find those resources, too. We have our -- in the Academic Skills Center website with details about both of these courses, graduate writing 1 and graduate writing 2. And I just posted that link in our chat box. And we have a comment in the Q & A.

Greatly appreciate this webinar to calm nerves with the PhD dissertation process just beginning. Thank you. Well, you're certainly welcome. And that is one of our goals. We really want to help people understand the requirement better and feel more confident going into it. I know we are beyond time. So I do want to wrap us up. But you all had great questions. Please take advantage of all the resources you see here and stay in touch with us via e-mail.

Please also go ahead and answer our four-question survey. We can improve this presentation with your feedback, and you can help future generations of Walden students better understand this requirement as well. So please share your thoughts in that four-question survey. The link is included in the DRWA links box beneath the slides. Thanks very much, everyone, for joining us today. Dena, thank you. And, Shawn, you're welcome to end the presentation at any time. Thanks, everybody.