ASC Webinar Transcripts

Presented on Wednesday August 30, 2017

View the recording

Updated 9/13/2014

 

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: Okay. Let's start talking about how to complete your doctoral writing assessment requirement. We're going to start today with two polls. These will be some polls that we have we would like your answers to on just general feelings of how you're feeling about the doctoral writing requirements that you will all begin next week.

Shawn, if you want to put the first one up. So in answering, when I think of the doctoral writing assessment, I feel this response more than others listed. If you'd like to take some time and please mark the best 5 answer. Okay. It looks like our poll has slowed down, and it looks like we have sort of a split between curious, frustrated, and anxious, but hopefully after this presentation we will be able to help lower some of that for you.

The next poll. Okay. The most important assessment question for me to have answered right now is. Please take a minute to pick one of the answers that works best for you. Okay. It looks like our answers have slowed down a little bit, so we'll end this poll. It looks like the most common response or question that everyone on the call has is why is this assessment required followed by how will you benefit from it, which we will cover both in this webinar.

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

Audio: Dena:  I'd like to start out giving everybody a brief introduction to the purpose and goal of the doctoral writing assessment. The purpose is to give you support to meet the university's expectations for writing in your course 6 work. Our goal is to help you apply stronger writing skills in your courses leading up to your capstone research.

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 have been to identify and strengthen your writing needs, to apply and practice writing strategies, to develop stronger writing skills and habits, and to build confidence in your writing leading up to your capstone stage.

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

Audio: Dena: Real briefly I would like to mention that the doctoral writing assessment is a university requirement for all students entering or returning into a doctoral program at Walden University.

We are now going to start on how to complete your writing assessment requirement with three general steps. First is exploring your DRWA, doctoral writing assessment course, this course should appear for most of you by tomorrow. It is given in the second term of your doctoral program. It is a zero credit section, and it is free for all students. We're going to discuss how to write your essay in Word and upload it into the assignment area of your DRWA course and what additional steps you may need to complete for your required or recommended writing 7 support beginning on the start date after you receive your assessment score, which would be next term.

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:  The first step is to explore your DRWA section classroom which is a doctoral writing assessment course. One tip that we have is to make sure you read the announcement on the home page. When you're on the home page under my announcements, please click on more announcements which would then bring you to a welcome page. The welcome page will have additional information about the writing assessment as well as some more details on how to complete it as well.

In exploring your writing assessment course, please do note that there is only one assignment. There are no discussion posts. There are no readings, and one tip is to make sure you read the prompt, which will give you the topic that you will need to write about as well as any submission instructions.

So when you click on the assignment link in the classroom, it will take you to some more details about submitting by day 7 of week 2 as well as some information on word length and how to get to the prompt for writing. You can always check out the submission and grading information.

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:  And this submission and grading information will also highlight the rubric on what you will actually be assessed on in your essay. Step 2 will be to write and submit your assessment essay in the assessment area of your DRWA course.

One tip we would like to point out is to draft and revise your essay before the due date. Please note that the naming convention of your essay is very specific to maintain anonymous submission guidelines. That is highlighted under the assignment feature of the classroom.

Please also note that this classroom will allow you to upload multiple essay attempts but you will be assessed only on the last essay submitted on the assignment area by day 7 of week 2. And again I wanted to point out the grading criteria. This will where you will access the rubric which will show you the areas that your essay will be assessed on.

Keep in mind this is a 250-word essay so it is rather short. There is a prompt with a topic on what you need to write about. This is a self reflective essay so you can use first  person, and APA is not being assessed.

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: Dena: When you are ready to submit your assessment in the DRWA section, please use the submit your assessment area in the classroom, and note that required late assignments are not permitted. We do not -- we will not accept anything after 11:59 p.m. mountain time on day 7 of week 2.

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: When you click on the submit your assessment, you will notice that there is a way to browse your computer for the Word document but also make sure you do keep in mind the naming convention that is required for this essay. Please note we cannot delete your submissions but you can submit multiple times and the last submission that you upload will be the one that is scored. Okay.

Starting with week 3 through 4 of the course, the anonymous assessors will score your essays. Our team will e-mail scores out once the course closes. Based on your score you will have additional requirements or suggested recommendations to complete your writing assessment requirement.

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

Audio: Dena: We're going to go over some of those now. So in completing your required or recommended writing support, you will receive the e-mail with the score. If you receive a score of a 5 or a 4, there are no 10 course requirements and your assessment will be listed as complete. We do however send out instructional resources and highlight many of them on the writing center website.

If you receive a score of 3, you will be required to complete graduate writing 2 course which will be offered and you will take it the following term after completing the DRWA section. If you receive a score of 2, 1, 0 or a 99, you will be required to complete both graduate writing 1 and graduate writing 2 courses. We'll discuss a little more about these courses in our next slide.

Please keep in mind that your score and rubric is the final information that you will receive on your essay. There are not individualized track changes or comments listed on the essay.

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

Audio: Dena: So if you receive a score of 99, 0, 1, 2, or 3, you will be required to take additional writing courses. These courses will include the SKIL 6051 graduate writing one which is basic composition for writing process, critical reading, summary. If you receive any score 3 and under, you also have the requirement of the SKIL 6061 graduate writing II which is intermediate composition which will highlight 11 different ways to paraphrase, synthesize and on basic evaluation. Keep in mind these courses are eight weeks in length. They are anywhere from one to one and a half credits, and they are offered for free for all students as part of the doctoral writing assessment.

The caveat to this is if you receive a U grade this is an S and U course so if you receive a U grade you will need to pay the $195 tuition to retake the course as part of passing your doctoral writing assessment requirement. The first required course will begin to the start date after your doctoral writing assessment is complete.

Required writing courses cannot be dropped. Please keep that in mind. However you may petition one time to defer one required writing course by one term and this follows the standard petition process that you can find on your student portal. You must satisfactorily complete the required writing courses within one year of receiving your DRWA score or academic dismissal policy would apply.

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

Audio: Dena: We do offer many resources for all students that are part of the doctoral writing assessment. Many of these that we will highlight you will be able to use while completing your essay and even after your essay is complete if you want additional information. The most important probably is just checking out our website which is writingassessment.waldenu.edu.  On this website you will also finds frequently asked questions that has answers to more than 40 common questions that have been asked since we launched the writing assessment.

There are also tips for writing your assessment essay and keep in mind you cannot use the paper review resources that the writing center offers four your writing assessment so please check out our tips for writing your essay. And there's a short video with some information on the importance of writing and assessment.

I know I've gone through some of that a little quickly but what we're going to do is after taking all this information in I would like to definitely open this up to questions, make sure you keep typing them in Q and A area…

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

Audio: Dena: and we're going to launch both polls that we started in the beginning as well to see if some of you are a little more comfortable or have a little different opinion on the writing assessment process at this time.

Shawn, if you'd like to launch the first one. So when you think of the doctoral writing assessment 13 after hearing the information we've given, do you feel -- I feel this response more than any other listed. Please choose your answers.

Okay. It looks like our answers have changed slightly in the fact that more people are grateful, a little less anxiety, you know, around it. Hopefully, you know, this having this sink in will help a little bit sink in as well as looking at all resources we have to offer once you're in the classroom will also help reduce some of that anxiety as well. I'm going to end this poll, and we'll open up the next one.

So after hearing everything we had to present today in our webinar the most important assessment question for you to have answered right now is, please select the answer that fits the best for you. Okay. It looks like many of you have had your questions answered base odd what we've presented in our webinar. I know there are still some who are looking at how you will benefit from the assessment. Some of the highlights that I would like to point out and we can close this poll at this time as well, Shawn, but some of the highlights I would like to point out for 14 the benefit is just it will help in realizing any areas of writing support that Walden can offer you as you continue through your course work into your dissertation, thesis, capstone projects.

Like I said, it does not score based on APA for a reason, because you will be working on APA the entire program, and it's something that you will begin to hone in on and increase your knowledge on throughout each course that you take through Walden up until you're -- up until and through your final capstone.

I'm just going to check real quickly if we have any pending questions I'll get to.

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: But first before that I am just going to give you some brief information regarding our webinar recording and e-mail support. This recording will be posted on our assessment webinars page within the next day or two. We will send out an e-mail after that letting you all know that the recording is up there and you will be able to link to many of the slides that we presented on today as well as relisten to the recording. It will be sent out that everybody that received the invitation so not just those who attended today which I'm very happy you did, thank you, but just letting you know that we will have the webinar archived on our site.

You can also e-mail us any time at writingassessment@mail.waldenu.edu  Any concerns or concerns you have please feel free to e-mail us. We will make sure we get back to you within a 24- to 48-hour turn around except for weekends of course but we will get back to you as promptly as we can to answer any questions you have or making sure you receive the right support throughout the course.

It does look like most of the questions have been answered. You can definitely keep typing them in, but what I'm going to do is do a final wrap-up before we close this session and it looks like we are going to close our session a little earlier than the half hour than we had initially discussed.

First I'd like to make sure that you stay informed about your doctoral writing assessment requirement. We recommend that you bookmark the DRWA, the doctoral writing assessment website and also review or at least skim the essay tips and frequently asked questions.

Second please let us know your thoughts about today's webinar by clicking on the survey link in the location in the center bottom of your screen under DRWA links. And it's a quick one-minute survey. Your comments are crucial to helping us develop useful information about the writing assessment requirement, and we look forward to hearing from you.

I would like to say again on behalf of all of us thank you very much for joining us today for this webinar how to complete your doctoral writing assessment. If you have more questions, please contact our team via e-mail at writingassessment@mail.waldenu.edu