How to Complete Your Doctoral Writing Assessment Requirement (Quarters 08.23.2017)

Presented on Wednesday August 23, 2017

View the recording

Updated 9/13/2017

 

Visual: Slide opens with title slide “How to Complete Your Doctoral Writing Assessment Requirement”

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

Audio: Dena: Again, welcome to the doctoral writing assessment, how to complete your doctoral writing assessments requirement webcast. We're going to start today with two quick polls that we would like for you to be able to answer, and we'll -- just so we can see where everyone is right now. Shawn, if you would like to open the first poll? So first question is, when I think of the doctoral writing assessment, I feel this response, more than any others listed. So if everyone would take a little bit of time and kind of mark where you're feeling right now about the writing assessment.

Okay. Looks like we have most of our answers in and right now we have the majority of people feeling anxious. I hope this webinar will help alleviate some of your anxiety around this. Can you open the second poll question, Shawn? Okay. This question is the most important assessment question for me to have answered right now, during this webinar is... Please select your answers. We'll give a minute or two for everyone to respond. [Silence]

Looks like some of the numbers have slowed down and looks like a lot of you are having questions around why the assessment is required, as well as where you can find tips for writing your essay, both of which we will be covering in this webinar. So I appreciate everybody's response and we'll get started.

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

Audio: Dena: So we have both a purpose and a goal for the doctoral writing assessment.The purpose is to give support to meet the university's expectation for writing in your course work and the goal is to help you apply stronger writing skills in courses leading up to your capstone research. This is a University requirement, the writing assessment. It was launched a year ago, and it is required for all students entering their second term, or any transfer students that are coming in that have not taken the assessment.

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 benefits of the doctoral writing assessment are to identify your trying strengths and needs and skills that you'll be using throughout your program. To apply and practice writing strategies, to 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 major steps in completing your doctoral writing assessment requirement. The first one is to explore your DRWA-8000 or 8001G course that you should see on your student portal as a course that will be added starting next Monday.

This course is a free course, it has zero credits and it is offered second term for most doctoral students. Once you're in the class, the requirement is to write an essay in Word and upload it into the assignment area of your DRWA course. And the third step is to complete your required or recommended writing support beginning on the start date after you receive your assessment score. We'll go into a little bit more detail at this time but please also note that the DRWA course, writing assessment course, is a required course and you cannot drop the course.

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:  So step one is to explore your classroom. The DRWA assessment course. Some helpful ideas is to read the announcements on the course page, which will be under my announcement and more announcement and will have a little more detail and depth into the writing assessment and the requirement behind it. So when you read -- when you read that, it will give you a little more information as well as a little more detail on the requirements that you have in there.
 It will be listed as a welcome message 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: Also while exploring your course, please note that there is only one assignment. There are no discussion posts and no readings in the writing assessment. There is a link that will be under the assignment link and if you're familiar with your classroom pages, the assignment link is usually in the same area but there is a link in there that will take you to the requirements of the assessment, which is due by day 7 of week 2. Since there are no discussion posts and there are no readings, there are no requirements to make sure you submit something by day three in this course but you have to upload your essay by day 7 of week two.

One important thing to also note is please read the prompt and the submission instructions. The prompt will let you know what you need to write about in your essay, and what points you need to make sure you're hitting on. As well as making sure you submit it properly into the correct area and labeled the correct way.

At this time, I'm going to turn this over to Stephanie Kramer who's going to talk a little more detail about the classroom and requirements after you have submitted 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: Stephanie: Great, thanks, Dena. Hi, everyone. Step two is writing and submitting your assessment essay. Like Dena mentioned, it going to be submitted in the assessment area of your DRWA course. So just a few tips before we get into that right away, so one of them is listed at the top, to draft and revise your essay before the due date so you do have two weeks about to submit this essay so take the time to draft and revise. Make sure you're proofreading, take some time away from it. You can always add some items to it if you want to and then always just making sure that you're submitting the correct essay. We don't have a draft option as some of your classrooms might have for the assessment but you can submit as many times as you need. Just keep in mind that the last submission will be the one that is scored by our assessors, so, like I said, you can upload as many times as you need to but it will be that last submission that will be scored.

So one item to note, and this is in the submission and grading information, so you're going to want to submit your essay in a specific naming format. So the name on your essay is going to be assessment with your student I.D. number followed after that. We don't want you to put your name on your essay, we do want it to remain anonymous for you so we're going to have you submit with that assessment and then student I.D. number.

And then another item is you can also look at the grading criteria ahead of time so we recommend you look at the grading criteria in the classroom and that's going to take you to the assessment rubric and that rubric is going to be what our assessors are scoring your essay based off of.

Visual: Slide changes to “Step 2: Write & submit your assessment essay in Assignment area of DRWA-8000G/8001G” and includes an image of the classroom and where to submit your assignment.

Audio: Stephanie: All right. So, like I said earlier, you do have two weeks to complete so as Dena mentioned also, it's due day 7 of week two so that's going to be the second Sunday of the course so you're going to want to use the submit your assignment area for this one.

We do also want to point out that no late assignments are accepted, since you do have that two-week period and you're writing a 250-word essay, which is about one page, we're not allowing late work to be accepted. If you do run into any technical issues, please contact our Walden support right away. That way we'll have the record that you did have that issue and we can work with you outside of the classroom on what we can do for your essay. But again no late assignments are going to be permitted since you do have almost that two-week time period to submit 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: Stephanie: So how to submit your essay. Once you go in, like I said before, you can submit as many drafts or as many teams as you want to but it is going to be that last essay that is going to be scored, so when you're in the area, you can click on the browse my computer and you'll be able to attach the file that you're going to upload and then, again, you want that in that assessment and student I.D. format and then make sure you're also checking that it's saved in a format that's compatible. Usually it will list here at the bottom, print might be a the small but it will list in the classroom what acceptable formats are for Microsoft Word and that way our assessors won't have any issues opening your essay, and witness being anonymous, we're not always able to reach out to you to have you reload so make sure you have the correct format and you have the correct essay loaded.

If you do happen to submit the wrong essay, you can re-submit up to that day 7, Sunday week two deadline so you can check that it we want through and that it was submitted correctly and you always want to make sure to click the submit button down at the bottom to upload your final draft.

And then also to note, we are not able to delete any submissions so, again, keeping in mind that only the last essay uploaded will be scored.

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

Audio: Stephanie: So a little bit more information about the scores for your assessment. So we do grade, it's a zero through five scale, so if you do receive a five or a four, what that means is there are no additional courses that will be required so we do recommend, however, that you take advantage of the Writing Center, a free resource for students and you can use that up until you reach your dissertation or doctoral studies stage, so really taking advantage of the Writing Center, you can set up appointment. There is a bunch of resources on there to other webinars, APA formatting, all that information that's going to help you build that foundation even more for when you're writing your dissertation.

If you happen to score a 3 on your he is Kay, we will recommend a required graduate writing 2 course, so this course is just the one course, you'll take it, it will be one term for you and then if you have a 2, a one or a zero, or a 99 score, that means that you have two additional writing support courses that will be required, so that will be graduate writing 1 and graduate writing 2 and we'll go into a little bit more about those courses in a minute.

And then just one other thing to note for you, so the feedback you're going to receive, you're going to get your score and that will be emailed to you, so just keeping in mind that that will be emailed to you the Monday, once the course ends, and the feedback provided is that score, there's some information in that email and then the rubric that you receive in the classroom, as well. So we just want to note that although some of your other instructors in classes, they'll usually do track changes or comments, we don't do that for the assessment so the feedback is based on the essay and the score and the rubric, there is no changes or comments.

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

Audio: Stephanie: so here is a little bit more information on the doctoral writing assessment and those required courses have the so our SKIL 6050 or 6051G courses those are graduate writing one. Those will be for basic composition, so you're focusing on the writing process overall, critical reading as well as summary.

The SKIL 6060G or 6061G, are graduate writing 2 and that's intermediate composition, and it will focus on paraphrasing, synthesis and evaluation. So, again, based on the previous scores, you might be required to take one course, graduate writing 1, or two courses, which is graduate writing 1 and 2.

And these are meant to be support courses for you to help you gain the foundation so you can be successful in your courses moving forward. And then these are 8-week courses. They're either 1 or 1.5 credits, depending on if you're quarter or semester-based student. So they are free for you and that just wanted to make a note on that, that is for the first time you take it through the writing assessment.

If you receive a U or unsatisfactory grade in that required course, you are required to retake it and pass it successfully and that does mean you would have to pay the $195 tuition. So just making sure that even though it is a writing support course, you are taking the time to turn in those assignment and make sure that you are doing things well.

And then you'll be registered for that automatically by our writing assessment team so that first course is required and that will happen the next term after your DRWA course, so just keeping in mind that that should show up on your student portal and so you are check wring into that classroom once you see it. Again, as Dena mentioned, like the writing assessment, these courses cannot be dropped so they are required to be taken once you get that score. You'll be registered for the next term.

You can, however, petition one time to defer one of your required writing courses, so you can defer it one time and only by one term. So we do really encourage students to take these right away, build that foundation and get that information so that they can have that requirement complete rather than waiting and putting it off as you get further into your program and your courses get harder as you continue. So you can petition in case you need to but it is recommended that you take these courses right away. And then you do have one year to complete the writing courses satisfactorily, after receiving your score. Otherwise you could be eligible for academic dismissal so the one-year time a lot of times comes into play if you need to take maybe a leave of absence and you use that petition process to defer your writing course. In doing so, that could put you very close to that one-year mark so just keeping that date in mind once you receive your score.

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

Audio: Stephanie: So the doctoral writing assessment, here are some additional resources. These are all listed on our writing assessment website so, again, that's http://writingassessment.waldenu.edu, and they're also available in the DRWA links that Dena mentioned below in the beginning, so the assessment website is really great. It has contact information in case you have additional questions. It has that frequently asked questions page with answers to more than 40 common questions that students before you have also had. You can find out more information about the doctoral writing assessment as well as the scores that you're receiving, so there's information on those courses and the scores.

There's also tips for writing your assessment essay, so make sure to check those out, those might help ease some of the concerns and anxieties that we talked about in the beginning, as well as a video that has information and just about the importance of writing and the assessment and why it is a requirement at Walden to take the writing assessment.

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

Audio: Stephanie: All right. So we have two more polls for you. They're the same questions as in the beginning. We just kind of want to talk over these and see if anything has changed for you based off this presentation.

So, Shawn, when have a second... Thank you. So, again, first question, when I think of the doctoral writing assessment, I feel this response more than the others listed.

All right. Looks like we're kind of ending that one. Thanks, Shawn. And we'll do our next poll, as well. So same question as in the beginning and for those of you that are just tuning in, we're going through a poll right now so the most important assessment question for me to have answered right now is...

And then you can choose from the options listed below. [Silence]

All right. Looks like our poll is starting to slow down a little bit here. Great to see, though, that a lot of you are looking like you know where to find the answers. Feel free to use the Q and A if you have other questions, though, as well, or check out the Walden website.

And I will hand it back over to Dena.

Audio: Dena: Thanks, Stephanie.

Visual: Slide changes to “How to Complete your Doctoral Writing Assessment Requirement- Q&A”

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: Dena: So wanted to reiterate a couple of our links and stuff that we do have, I know we're getting quite a few questions and I've been trying to answer them as we go throughout and a couple of the others I can continue to answer once we close out the rest of this presentation. A couple of areas I do want to point out is that this webinar is being recorded and it will be posted on our assessment webinar page within two days.

We will be sending out an email with the link to the recording and the presentation to everybody that was invited to the webinar, whether they were able to attend or not today. We do appreciate your attendance if you were able to make it today but I know timing can be an issue for some people, as well. You can also email us any time. Any questions that you have on the writing assessment, we are here to help you.

Our email address is writingassessment@mail.waldenu.edu  Any questions that you have, honestly, don't think of anything as being an off question or anything. We are here to help you and to help you succeed throughout this process, and hopefully throughout the rest of your doctoral program, as well. We also are asking that we have a four-question survey. There is a link under the DRWA links for the four-question survey and we would really appreciate your feedback.

So anything that you can send to us, any ideas that, you know, just wanting to know how the presentation went, hopefully everybody is getting their questions answered and feeling a little more -- you know, a little better about the writing assessment and the process. It might sound scary when everyone was first signed up for it but it is, you know, a pretty short essay, it's about 250 words, about one page requirement and anything else that we can help answer, we do have tons of links, we have tons of resources and please feel free to check them all out.

So one thing I would like to say in wrapping up our presentation today, is first we would like everyone to stay informed about the doctoral writing assessment requirement. We do recommend that you bookmark the doctoral writing assessment website and also review or at least skim some of our essay tips and the frequently asked questions, as Stephanie had talked about, as well. And like I said, please let us know your thoughts about the web I that are today by clicking on the survey link.

It's a really quick, one-meant survey with four quick questions, letting us know how it went and we look forward to hearing from all of you about that. I'm going to go through some of the questions before we close it, as well. I know some of the questions I did not get to, some of the other questions on why it's a four-week course if you have to submit by the end of the second week. The reason for that is we have two weeks -- the first two weeks of the course the students will submit all their essays, you can do that anywhere from day one through the deadline of day 7 which please keep in mind, day 7, the deadline is 11:59 p.m. mountain time. That is the required time to submit before that time. The second two weeks of the course is when our anonymous assessment team will go into the classrooms and individually, anonymously, because we do ask that they're anonymous submissions, score all the essays based on the rubric. So this allows their team time to go in and score all the essays that were submitted in every section that is currently running. They have until the end of the four-week course to get their scores submitted into the classrooms and day one of week five, so the day after the course closes, the writing assessment team, we do send out emails informing every student of the score they received and any additional requirements that they have based on that score or resources available based on that score.

There was a question if you write double-spaced and 250 words goes over a page, that's fine. The 250-word requirement, it's more just making sure that everyone can write succinctly and try to, you know, kind of give a limit on the number of pages so that we don't have anywhere from one to 100 pages being submitted. The one page, if you do double-space, if it goes over a page, that's just phone, as well. That's not a big deal.

Another question. So somebody was curious about the writing assessment, how it can be undertaken by students that may also be taking a high course credit load or a credit hour load concurrently. The writing assessment is only one assignment, as we said before, there are no discussion posts, no readings. It is a 250-word essay based on a prompt. It is due by day 7 of week two. When you have access to your classroom tomorrow, you are more than welcome to go in there, look at the prompt and the requirement and even start writing your essay before the course starts, if you want to, but please keep in mind, you cannot submit it -- you cannot submit your essay until day one, so being that it is a two-week course, if you get it done early, you're welcome to submit it as soon as you get it done and then, you know, as Stephanie had mentioned, as well, you can edit and tweak it as you want throughout the two weeks but just keeping in mind that your last submission is the only one that will be actually scored.

Somebody needs clarification on why you can submit several times and not one time. The reason behind that is we do not offer a drafts function in the classroom so there is not a way to submit a draft of your essay, so, therefore, if you submit an essay and then find an error or an area that you wanted to tweak or correct a little bit, you can definitely do that and re-submit at that time. And then we have a question with somebody who -- oops, sorry, I think I lost part of the question here.

There is somebody who mentioned they are starting a division ear tags, they are in their dissertation phase. If you are currently in your dissertation phase and you've finished all your core course work, please send an email directly to writingassessment@mail.waldenu.edu

This writing assessment is primarily for students starting out in their doctoral programs and we'll certainly look into seeing if based on the student handbook, if you are exempt from the writing assessment at this time based on where you're at in your program, so please do email us specifically with that question. The spacing, it can be single, 1.5 or double-spaced. Any of those will work. Generally double-spaced might be easier to read so like I said if it is double-spaced and goes over, you know, over a page based on the word count, that's fine, too.

So somebody asked what we meant by a prompt that we're referring to. The prompt is basically what we want the essay to be about. It is basically the topic for your essay and that will be listed under the assignment requirements. You will be able to see that prompt once you have access to the classroom. So what we write is based on what -- so what you will write is going to be based on the essay prompt that is in the classroom, on what the essay topic will be based -- it will be in the classroom for you on what you should be writing about.

Let's see if we have others. There is only one topic to choose from. Somebody asked that question, as well, so there is only one prompt for everybody across the board to write on, so there are not choices on that but it is a more personalized type essay. We are not looking specifically at -- you know, we aren't looking at APA, that's something you will do through every single course in your doctoral program so what we're looking at is more grammar, mechanics style writing areas that you will be writing on.

You can use first person as well since it is more of a personalized essay. Yep, so the requirement that the University put out, somebody had asked a question on why this is not required in the first term but the second, so when the University decided to mandate the writing assessment requirement, it was decided that this would be a second-term requirement. Part of the rope behind that is students will have their student readiness orientation, they also have their foundations course generally coming into the program, so a lot of it is just wanting to make sure students are acclimated into the classroom layout and how to post and how to submit to a dropbox, you know, having the assignments uploaded so that is the reason they chose the seconds term for the writing assessment have the again, a question on APA. APA is not required. You do not have to use citations, you do not have to use formal AMA writing because this is more of a personal essay that you'll be writing.


However, you are more than welcome to use APA. The requirements on what you will be scored on you'll find on the rubric for what they're actually looking for and APA is not one of them. Someone asked, we now have access to the classroom. You'll have access to the classroom on Thursday, tomorrow. Everybody should have access to the classroom where you can go around and explore but, like I stated before, please keep in mind, do not submit anything before day one. I'm not even sure if you are capable of submitting your essay before day one in the writing assessment class but I would say for all of your classes at Walden, do not submit before day one because at times students still need to get shuffled into different sections and you will lose any work that you submit as well as anything submitted before day one usually will be ungraded and you'll either have to re-submit it or work with the instructor to find out how to make up any points for anything you submit early. So I would just suggest across any course that you have at Walden, do not submit before day one.

And then, yeah, I think that was the last question that I can see in there so -- I don't know if anyone had any other questions. I'll wait just a minute to see if anyone does. And hopefully we've answered most of your questions and, like I said, if anything was missed because you either joined late or missed something in the conversation we had, we will be sending the link out this week feel okay, at this time I don't see any other questions coming in so I think that we will work on closing out the section.

I do want to thank everybody very much for joining us today on this webinar, how to completes your doctoral writing assessment. If you do have more questions, please contact our team via email at writingassessment@mail.waldenU.edu  At this time I'll close off this session and I hope that you will have an enjoyable evening.