How to Complete Your Doctoral Writing Assessment (Semesters 1.03.2018)

Presented Wednesday January 3, 2018

View the recording

Updated 1/10/2018

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.  Presentation opens with “Doctoral writing assessment” and

Audio: Stephanie Kramer: All right, we are going to start out with our two polls that we have for the writing assessment. Shawn is going to help me get the first question up there for you. You should see this on your screen and I will read it out, as well. The first question is going to be "The most important assessment question for me to have answered right now is…." [READING POLL ANSWERS VERBATIM]

I will give you all a little bit of time here if you want to go ahead and vote on the poll. We will go ahead and go on to the next question once we have gotten all of our responses in.

[silence while poll is completed]

All right, it does look like our poll is slowing down. It looks like the majority of you are looking for where to find tips for writing essay. We will go through a few of those today and at the end we will have a resource slide looking at those tips and frequently asked questions and we can get you to that resource, as well. That poll is now closed.

We will pull up our second question for you. Our second poll here is just kind of to gauge how you all are feeling about the assessment. The question is: "When I think of the Doctoral Writing Assessment, I feel this response more than the others listed…." [READING POLL ANSWERS VERBATIM]

[silence while poll is completed]

For those of you joining, we are just taking a quick poll here in the beginning. Don't worry. You have not missed much, just to see what everyone is thinking about the writing assessment.

It looks like that poll has also slowed down, as well. It looks like a majority of you are feeling just a little bit anxious about the assessment. That's okay, that does happen. Our hope is at the end of this webinar you will feel much more comfortable and prepared about the writing assessment and that we can get those questions answered for you. Thank you Shawn, for getting those up for us. And we can get started with the rest of the presentation.

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

Audio: Stephanie Kramer: Just to start out, we want to go over what the purpose and goal of the writing assessment is. Our purpose is to give you support to meet the University's expectations for writing in your coursework. Not just in your coursework, but at a graduate level. It is a little different. Some of you may be coming from years of schooling, some from right from your master's program. We want to make sure we are here in providing you that necessary support so we can support you and you can feel comfortable in your doctoral writing. It is a different expectation then you may be used to.

So that is the purpose of our writing assessment -- to make sure you have the support so you can move forward successfully, which also goes hand-in-hand with our goal, which is to help you apply stronger writing skills in your current courses leading up to your capstone research. We want you to have really solid foundation in basics so when you're working up to your dissertation you can focus on the content in research and not focus on grammar or any of those errors you might not feel as confident about. We really want you to apply stronger writing skills in the beginning and build on that foundation in each course.

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: Stephanie Kramer: So, what are some of the benefits of the writing assessment? Definitely, we want to identify and strengthen your writing needs. These might be areas you are aware of. Maybe grammar and punctuation are not your strong suit or paraphrasing is really difficult for you. Those are areas we went to identify, as well as areas you may not be sure you need support in. We want to help you along the way. We want to make this a positive experience and make sure you're getting the most out of your writing assessment. We want to identify and strengthen your writing needs so you can be successful when you get to your dissertation. And again, applying and practicing writing strategies. That is what the assessment is going to identify, as well as his graduate-level writing courses.

We are going to help you apply and practice those writing strategies so you can pull that in your regular coursework for the program. It is also going to help you develop stronger writing skills and habits. These skills are very important, as you get into writing your dissertation, as you get into the writing content analysis and you have better understanding of what you are doing in your dissertation because you have been building off of that for your program coursework.

Also, we want you to feel confident in your writing skills. This assessment is there to help build the confidence in your writing abilities, to dissertation and that capstone stage you are confident of what you're putting on paper and what you are turning in to your mentor.

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

Audio: Stephanie Kramer: How do you complete your Doctoral Writing Assessment? This is a quick overview and we will go over things a little more thoroughly in the next slides. The first thing is we really encourage you to explore your DRWA-8000G/DRWA-8001G classroom. That is your Doctoral Writing Assessment course. Most of you will take that during your second term of courses.

It is a free course and 0 credits. Don't feel we are adding another course to your schedule that is three credits and will take up much of your time. It is a simple requirement that is easy to complete. How to complete it is by writing an essay in MS Word and uploading it into the assignment area of your DRWA course. It's only about a one-page essay. We are not asking for three or four pages, not for many resources. It is going to be a personal essay about a topic located in your classroom. We are asking for a one-page response to that topic. It is just going to be a personal response that you provide to that topic so we can see where you are with your doctoral writing.

Once you complete your essay, you will get a score out of the 0 to 5 range. Based on that, we can provide you with any additional writing support. That information will be in the rest of your presentation as well as your essay score.

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: Stephanie Kramer: To dive into how to complete your assessment, that first step we talked about, exploring your classroom. One thing we encourage is to go into the Blackboard classroom, read your Announcements, make sure you click on "more announcements," so you can make sure you're catching all of the content in the classroom as well as the [indiscernible] those are going to be pages for you to be aware of in your Blackboard classroom. Down at the bottom is going to be a Welcome, it is going to welcome you to the DRWA course, if you information about what to expect. Reading those announcements is important for you for this course as well as any of your other courses.

Along with exploring your DRWA course, as I mentioned, there is just one assignment. There are no readings, you don't have to go looking for outside sources. We are just asking for a one-page essay based on a topic located in the classroom.

One of our tips is to read the prompt and the submission instructions very closely to make sure your essay is being uploaded. Because there is one assignment, just a one-page essay, we are not able to accept any late work. You have two weeks to complete this essay. It is not due until the end of Week 2. Week 2 is when these are due. You do not have to find any outside resources, no reading material. You can find that in your classroom, if you go to classroom on the left-hand side, that is where the prompt is and how 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 Kramer: Step two is just writing and submitting your assessment essay. Again, our tip, draft and revise your essay. You should try to be doing this with any of your coursework. It's great to write it, give it a break. You go through a lot of that when you get to the dissertation phase. So you will practice that now.

We recommend doing that before the due date. Because you have two weeks, we can't accept any late work. We encourage you to get to the classroom early and at least get a draft of this essay so we can make sure you are turning that in on time.

We want to look at the submission and grading information. To submit your completed essay for review do the following. One of the important tips, as well, do not write your name on the essay. Make sure that you are saving it as an anonymous essay. That is important to our assessors because we want it to be anonymous for you all. What you are going to do is write Assessment and then, your student ID. That is how we are going to have you submit your essay, that is the title of your essay. Assessment and your student ID number.

It sounds like there might be some issues with audio, so I am checking with Shawn here to make sure you can hear me. We want to make sure you are getting all this information. I did turn up my audio volume. Hopefully that helps. For those of you who maybe could hear me, I hope it's not too loud for you, now.

Again, to go over that, for your assessment, we do want them to be anonymous for you. We don't want your name on the assessment. How you are going to save your assessment by putting Assessment and student ID number. So that will be the title of your essay and that is how you want to save your document. You want to make sure you do that and that information is in the classroom under the assignment information for submission and grading. That is really important. If you do happen to put your name on it, that's okay. We just want to make sure it stays somewhat anonymous.

Just as a side note, the classroom does allow you to upload multiple essay attempts. But you are only going to be assessed on the last essay you submit before the deadline. Keep that in mind. You can go in, upload an assignment early. You decide you want to change anything, you can submit your second essay on top of that and that is the one that will be graded. We won't look at any drafts ahead of time but you can do multiple drafts of your assessment.

At the bottom of that is your scoring rubric. Assessment rubric, really make sure you take a look at that. That is how our assessors would determine a score for your category. There are three categories they are assessing, if you really take a look at the rubric, that will really make sure your essay covers all the points they are looking for.

Great question, we do want it a .doc or .docx. Either of those are fine. Sometimes PDFs do not work the best, if people are uploading three different types of Word documents that are not Microsoft, sometimes we get into a little bit of issues with that. If it doesn't upload correctly we will reach out to you. But the best is to do a Microsoft Word and a .doc or a .docx format.

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 Kramer: Again, you use the Submit Your Assignment area. This is going to explain how to submit your assignment, when your assignment is due. Again, that is by Day 7 of Week 2. Because this is a four-week course, the assignment is due at the end of Week 2.

Keep that in mind. We are not able to accept late assessments, like I said, just because we do have the two week timeframe to complete this essay. Make sure you take into account your time zone and adjust to make sure you submit on time. What is going to happen is essays are due for all Walden courses by 11:59 PM Mountain standard Time. The time listed in the classroom might say 1:59 AM and that is going to be Eastern. Make sure you have it in by either 1:59 AM Eastern time or 11:59 PM Mountain time. The classroom will tell you the time. You just want to make sure you adjust for your specific time zone.

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 Kramer: Step two, again, write and submit your essay. Our tip is going to be click Submit to upload your final draft. Sometimes you browse your computer. You might add a comment and you from might forget about the Submit part. I know sometimes the classrooms vary, and might have things updated. So make sure you click Submit to submit that final draft, that is how your essay will be uploaded. Because essays are submitted anonymously and we have hundreds of student registered, are not able to go back into the classroom to verify your assessment is uploaded. It's really going to be on you to make sure the assessment is uploaded.

I recommend to students, upload your assessment, give yourself plenty of time, then either a few hours later or the next day, not past the deadline, just make sure to double check that that is uploaded. We would hate for you to not get it uploaded and then you don't get a score on your essay because unfortunately, we can't accept that late essay. So double check to make sure the essay is submitted.

We also cannot delete your submissions. Only the last essay you upload will be scored. Double check it is your final draft or final submission that you want uploaded, that it is for the right class. Sometimes that happens, the wrong essay is uploaded if it is, if you're working on multiple assignments. So you do want to make sure it is for the DRWA assessment. The last upload is the one that will be scored.

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

Audio: Stephanie Kramer: Talking a little about scoring, this is the step three area. What is going to happen is there will be a score of 5 to 0. And 4 or a 5 on your assessment and those are recommended resources. The Writing Center is really great. You can schedule appointments for free, they will look over your [indiscernible] and give you feedback.

You can use the Writing Center up until you begin working on your dissertation. I really encourage students to utilize the Writing Center. They have great resources, grammar, APA, research, all of that. Check out the Writing Center. If you score a 4 or 5, that's great. We are going to recommend you utilize the Writing Center to the best of your ability.

The next score would be a 3, if you score a 3 out of 5 on your essay we will require you [indiscernible] graduate writing. That will focus on paraphrasing, [indiscernible], that is something we want to make sure you have a good handle on because it is so important. You score a 3 on your essay you will have that Graduate Writing II course.

The final scores are 2, 1, 0 or 99. If you get either of those scores, that means Graduate Writing I and Graduate Writing II are required. Most students score a 3, 4 or 5.

A 99 is going to be plagiarism. Most students don't realize if you are citing some of your old work and you don't cite it, say it was from a paper or foundations course, that could be considered plagiarism. It does flag your essay for those things if you are utilizing work from an earlier course. Keep that in mind. It is a one-page original essay. You can use work from another class, but you need to make sure you cited appropriately that you used work from another course. Most students don't have issues with that, as you have quite a bit of experience.

A zero score is going to indicate an essay has not been uploaded. Most of you in here won't have to worry about that because you will get your essay in on time. But if you get a 2, 1, 0 or 99 it is Graduate Writing I and Graduate Writing II. Those are the scores for the essay and if we think additional writing support could be required and a good option for you.

Just a note on the back, as well, there are not going to be any track changes or comments on the document that you submit. Keep that in mind. We score essay, that one page, based off of your score, you will get an email with your final score for your essay. It's not going to be posted in the Classroom. That score is going to tell you more about how you scored a 5, 4, 3, whatever your score was.

Also, our assessors use a rubric to help with grading criteria. That rubric is important, make sure you take a look ahead at that ahead of time to make sure you cover all of those areas in your essay and get that higher score.

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

Audio: Stephanie Kramer: Talking about any required writing courses, I mentioned our Graduate Writing I and our Graduate Writing II. Again, the Graduate Writing I course is going to be focusing more on the writing process, critical reading and summary. Graduate Writing II is going to be intermediate, which is paraphrasing, synthesis and evaluation.

Great question, how long before grades are posted? The course is four weeks long. Just like your other courses, you will get it the week after your course officially ends. The first two weeks you will be working on your essay and submitting it by the end of Week 2. Our assessors will go in to the classroom Week 3 and Week 4 and score all the essays. About a week after that, Week 5, you will get your essay score.

Just a note on the required writing courses as well, these are 8 weeks long and they are free for you. You are not going to have to pay for these courses. The only exception to that is, if you are unable to pass the courses successfully the first time, you get that unsatisfactory grade, that does require you to retake the course, because they do need to be successfully completed with a S grade. If you have to take the course, it will cost you the tuition amount, which is $195 for tuition. Keep that in mind.

We encourage students to take this seriously. It is going to benefit you in the long run and we don't want to have you retake and pay for a course when it is free the first time. It can be a little daunting but these courses are also designed for you to take in tandem with your program courses. We understand you have school, work and program requirements on top of everything. We don't want to bog you down with a three credit course. They are one to 1 1/2 credits, they are free, they are designed to be taken along with your program credits. Once you get your score, if you do have any additional writing support courses, those will begin on the next start date. For those of you who are semester students, then you will end up taking it in the next term, that midsemester start. So just keeping that in mind, it will start pretty soon for you.

If, for whatever reason, you maybe need to take a break from classes or it's a really busy time -- I know we sometimes have a lot of accounting students and obviously, tax season is coming up here -- you can petition one time to defer one of your writing courses. It only delays it by one term but it would mean you wouldn't have to start until the next term. So it can give you a little bit of a break there. They can't be dropped by your Student Success Advisor and you can't go in and adjust your registration, but you can petition to request that it be deferred by one term. So just to keep that in mind.

We encourage students to complete their courses as soon as possible because your program courses are only going to get harder in content and assignments, so we really encourage you to complete it as soon as possible. But sometimes with work and family and those sorts of things, there are better times to take the course. We understand that, which is why we have the petition process in place.

Also, a note about the requirement. If you have any graduate writing courses to complete, they do have to be complete within one year. However, that can be a little misleading. We give you the one-year timeframe in case you do take a leave of absence, in case you take time away from the program, or in case you don't pass the first time or you do that petition. That gives you a little extra time to complete the course but unless you petition, it does need to be completed with the next start date. Keep that in mind.

Also, so students are aware, if you don't complete these requirements within one year, it is a university requirement for all doctoral students. If you don't complete your required courses within one year, that can make you eligible for academic dismissal. That is another reason we encourage students to get the course work done right away, they are done, completed, and you don't have to worry about them anymore. Just to keep that tidbit in mind, as well.

Unfortunately, we don't have examples of student essays, because sometimes they include very personal information and we don't want to share that because it is personal for our students and we do keep that anonymous. We don't have any examples, but it is only one page and once you have seen the topic in the classroom, it will be come easily for you once you read that topic. It's usually about two or 3 questions to respond to. No references are needed, either. You don't need to go search for outside sources to add to your essay. If you do want to include them, though, that's fine. Just make sure you are including that reference at the bottom of your essay and cite it appropriately.

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

Audio: Stephanie Kramer:  Some of our writing assessment resources for you, this http://writingassessment.waldenu.edu, that is our main website, it has a lot of the information we just went over, plus, a ton more information on the purpose and the benefits and why you're taking this.

We also have our frequently asked questions, those are more than 40 common questions students have asked over the last year and a half. We put that there so students can find them.

If you are not finding a question on your website, definitely feel free to email us. Just keep in mind it may take a little time to get back to you. We are usually pretty quick but it depends on the time.

We gave a few tips in this presentation but there are tips beyond those we went over. Those are good resources, as well. There is also a video about information about the importance of writing and assessment.

If you download the PowerPoint, you can access these. Otherwise, as I mentioned earlier, the webinar will be sent out in the link for that as well. Or you can email us afterward and I can get you some of the pages, information how to access the website. Thank you, Shawn, for commenting on that.

You can, if you decide you want to take them, what I always recommend is submit an essay, anyway. That way, you will get that rubric back. You will see where you're at with your graduate-level writing. You may end up testing out of it or you may need to take one of the graduate-level writing courses.

If students test out of that process, if they get a 4 or 5 on their essay, they can take Graduate Writing II. They can email us and say I got a 4 but would still like to take Graduate Writing II. It would be taking them voluntarily, so I believe you might need to pay for the course. We might be able to make an exception, so you might want to email us, say where you are with your writing, and see if it would be the best course of action for you to take that course.

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

Audio: Stephanie Kramer: All right, we are going to do the same polls that we did at the beginning, just to see how everyone is feeling now that we have gone through the presentation. Hopefully we have eased some of the anxiety and that curiosity and you are feeling much more prepared for your assessment. I am going to also look through there to make sure I didn't miss any other questions.

Courtney, you asked if it will be on your transcript. It does show on your degree audit. I am not sure if it will show up on your official transcript. I believe it would, once it is complete, it would show as "met." But if you happen to look at it and that is not the case then let us know, and that is probably not on there. But it should be, because it is a required course.

The writing assessment email is just WritingAssessment@mail.waldenu.edu.

We will do this first poll here. Again, that is that same question, "The most important assessment question for me to have answered right now is…." [READING POLL ANSWERS VERBATIM].

I will give you just a little bit more time to answer still, here.

That looks like some of you are still wondering how will I benefit? It's just a way to see where you are at with your doctoral level writing and if Walden can provide you with any additional writing support that will be useful along the way.

The assessment is going to be due Day 7 of Week 2. The best way to do it is go into your Blackboard classroom and check the actual due date to make sure you have the actual date and time written down.

If you were to go to the doctoral writing website, there is an option for where you can find tips for your essay.

We did close that poll now. It's great to see the majority of you know the answer to those questions, now.

We will do the second poll. I know this is the same as the first question poll we did. I know some of you may be due, you might have missed the first poll in the writing. The question is [READING POLL QUESTION AND ANSWERS VERBATIM]

I will give you a little bit of time to vote on the poll. I think that is everyone. So thank you all very much for voting.

For those of you who might still be a little curious or anxious, always feel free to send us an email. If you have any questions, we are happy to answer those. We will also have some virtual office hours coming up here. So we will be emailing out that information a little later this week. That is just a drop in hour in case you have questions, you want to see what other students are asking. You do not need to stay for the entire hour. There is not going to be a formal presentation. But that might be another option for you as well, for those of you who might still be a little concerned about the assessment, to come and ask additional questions.

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: Stephanie Kramer: Like I mentioned, we will be sending out the webinar recording. This one says it will be posted within two days. That is what we aim for. Sometimes it might take a little longer just with some of the things we have to answer depending on all our student questions. By early next week, though, you should have that webinar recording.

Here is our email address, please feel free to email us at any time and we will get back to you as soon as possible with any questions you might have. We will also send out an email that is a four question survey where you can share your feedback about the webinar, about the writing assessment.

Thank you all very much for attending. If you have questions, please feel free to ask them in the chat box below. We will hang out here for another 10 minutes or so and get those questions answered.

If you don't have any questions, you can feel free to either wait and see what other students might be asking, or you can always drop of the presentation, as well. And, thank you all again for attending.

Unfortunately, Kelli, no, the essay can't be reviewed by the Writing Center ahead of time. I would recommend if you want someone to review it, say maybe another classmate or peer or colleague who would be willing to read through your essay and compare it to your rubric. The Writing Center is not available for this assignment, in particular, just the other writing courses.

Lynnette, it looks like you may have raised your hand. Unfortunately, the audio for students is not active, but if you want to type a question into the chatbox, we can get it answered for you. No problem, we just wanted to make sure you got your question answered if you had one.

Ricky, yes. We will send an email for this webinar recording as well as those virtual drop-in hours that I mentioned. We are looking to get that out Thursday or Friday with those final dates for you all, so you can hopefully attend one of those if you have more questions.

Again, thank you all very much for attending. Keep an eye out, we will be sending a few more email reminders, again, for those virtual reminders.... If you see anything from writing assessment, make sure to peek into that email. It's just that reminder to make sure you write down any of those important dates.

If you have any questions, you can just respond back to those emails, as well, and that will come into our writing assessment email, as well. If you do have questions, you will probably be hearing from me. I will respond to those, too.