Program-wide portfolio assessment in composition as a professional-development and consistency practice¶

Design · All designs
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

An assessment practice in which writing-program faculty review sampled student portfolios across sections to gauge consistency and improve instruction. Interviewees "identified program‑wide portfolio assessment as a best practice, but the practice has not yet been widely implemented." Faculty engaging in it report value both for gauging cross-section consistency and for improving their own classroom activities through shared discussion of assignments.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

Resources and capacity to support faculty time for cross-section norming and review

Constraints¶

One campus dean noted the campus no longer has resources for paid lecturer time to read assignments across sections for norming purposes

Target Learners¶

First-year writing students across course sections

Learning Goals¶

Consistent instructional quality and assignment expectations across writing course sections

Claims¶

Patterns Used¶

Portfolio: sampled student portfolios from many sections are read together by the program's faculty
Portfolio Assessment: applied at program level, to gauge consistency across sections and improve instruction

Early engagement and tailored support for a coordinated rollout — from the same study of CSU writing and quantitative reasoning redesign

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

Bracco, K. R., Schrager, C., Calisi, G., Gutierrez, P., Salciccioli, M., & Finkelstein, N. (2019). College-ready in the California State University system: Campus experiences implementing EO 1110. San Francisco, CA: WestEd. https://www.calstate.edu/eo/EO-1110.html

Page metadata

Field	Value
`type`	`design`
`id`	`program-wide-portfolio-assessment-composition`
`title`	`Program-wide portfolio assessment in composition as a professional-development and consistency practice`
`description`	`An assessment practice in which writing-program faculty review sampled student portfolios across sections to gauge consistency and improve instruction.`
`status`	`review`
`generated`	by `process:settle-candidates` on `2026-10-10`
`trust`	unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
`sources`	1 — `bracco-2019`

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