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Assessing writing in a physical therapy unit.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

A case study detailing one student's involvement with supervisors, coworkers, and patients in a hospital physical therapy unit yields significant information about factors involved in the creation of documents to solve a personnel problem. Student documents reveal the student's efforts and encumbrances as he creates viable options to address the problem as an insider. Analysis of data is useful in assessing students' experiences and promoting teacher accountability.

Introduction

As a new faculty member incorporating service learning in all my courses and facing third year review, I am especially concerned with the experiences of my students. The kinds of comments that students record in course evaluations indicate that changes occurred for them. One student, who worked with an investigator in the identification unit of the local police department reports, "I saw the impact of their reports and began looking more carefully at my own writing." Such assessment is insufficient. Jo Allen cautions that a single measure "tends to compromise the strength and veracity of the measure" (96). She recommends a triangulation of methods (96). The nature of the class assignments pointed to the case study as a suitable method to use. Many students in my technical writing courses have jobs, and they undertake projects at their workplaces. They are immersed in the organizational culture as insiders. I chose to study their experiences and their learning outcomes situated within four key questions:

1. Do student activities reflect theoretical/philosophical goals that frame assignments?

2.What do students learn about writing in a professional setting and the influences on that writing?

3. How are their writing abilities strengthened?

4. How are students affected as they address a need or problem that has ramifications at many levels and that is intertwined with status, reputation, workload, evaluation, and compensation?

Reviewing the Philosophical Framework

Laura Julier notes that conversations regarding service learning reflect a wide range of theoretical assumptions and philosophical foundations (133). In shaping and evaluating ssignments I was influenced by theorists espousing democratic citizenship and moral and civic literacy. For Bruce Herzberg determining whether students become involved in understanding what needs to be done to effect social change is an important part of assessment (58-59). Herzberg refers to the goals of Campus Compact, whose concern is that service learning programs be designed to promote critical analysis of social problems (58). According to Herzberg, having students merely write personal responses to community service experiences "is not sufficient to raise critical or cultural consciousness" (59). Paul Heilker advocates a form of service learning in composition courses that moves away from the curriculum to help students "understand writing as social action" (74) Students actually construct writing products that help support an organization's philosophy and achieve its mission....

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