Edward M. White, Emeritus Professor of University of California, San Bernadino and currently a Visiting Scholar at the University of Arizona, will be a guest of the Thompson Writing Center in June. Through this year, he designed and consulted on assessment in Duke’s English-Composition MOOC. The Coursera course is taught by Denise Comer, the Director of the First-Year Writing Program. This is one of the first MOOCs to depend primarily on peer assessment for grading and Professor White helped design writing projects and grading rubrics for the platform. This summer he will be guiding the effort to assess the effectiveness of the course after it finishes.
As part of his visit, Professor White has agreed to hold a public talk about his role as a leader in researching and developing better ways to assess student writing gains. It is titled “A Personal, Historical, and Tagmemic Look at the Assessment of Writing: from Multiple-Choice Bubbles to E-Portfolios.” He will review the developments in portfolios and writing assessment since 1971, when, as an English department chair, he became involved in writing assessment by accident. Next year, his fifteenth book will be published by Utah State/Colorado State University Press. He is the recipient of many honors, including the 2011 Exemplar award from the Conference of College Composition and Communication.
Please join us on June 24 (time TBD) in Perkins 217 for his talk. For more information, please contact Jennie Saia of the Thompson Writing Center.