Conference Session

Promoting Communication Skills

Collection

2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Authors

Lisa R. Volpatti, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Alex Jordan Hanson, University of Texas at Austin; Jennifer M. Schall; Jesse N. Dunietz, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Amanda X. Chen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Rohan Chitnis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Eric J. Alm; Alison F. Takemura, U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute; Diana M. Chien, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

their ability to concretelyevaluate student growth ​[12], [13], [33]​. Direct assessments are complicated by three considerations: validity, reliability, andethical limitations on truly scientific study design. Validity asks: does the assessment measurewhat it is supposed to measure? Reliability asks: can writing be consistently and quantitativelyevaluated by different evaluators? Finally, ethics forbid writing centers from executing theclassic “treatment/no treatment” experimental design: true negative controls would requiredenial of writing center access to students who want it. Due to these three constraints, “thetypical evaluation of writing programs...usually fails to obtain statistically significant results” ​[34]​.For this reason