Colleagues:
Can you help me find established benchmarks and other measures of best
practice for writing centres and writing courses? I'm being asked to come
up with these for the Arts and Science component in the new U of T planning
and budget cycle. This recurrent exercise could be a good opportunity for
the 14 or so writing centres here and the increasing number of writing
courses to show administrators how important and successful we are. But in
budget-cutting Ontario we also have to see it as one more challenge to
defend our existence.
I am aware of Jim Bell's methods for program evaluation (he outlines them
in Inkshed 14.7, available at
http://www.stthomasu.ca/inkshed/dec96.htm#subtitle3), which depend on
intensive interviewing of students. Has anyone found other ways of
gathering "hard" data -- maybe about retention rates? Are there other
measures of student success related to writing-centre use that are both
valid and vivid? We will certainly provide testimonials from students and
fellow faculty, but hope we can also speak some of the administrative
language of numbers.
Thanks,
Margaret.
--
(Dr.) Margaret Procter
University of Toronto
Coordinator, Writing Support
15 King's College Circle
Toronto, Ontario M5S 3H7
(416) 978-8109; FAX (416) 971-2027
http://www.utoronto.ca/writing
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