The Hybrid Courses Were More Positive Than Their Evaluations Of The Courses

By Author: Jordon
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Since 2002, our program has continued to evolve. For example, we have started other projects on the TTU campus that apply what we've learned. One such project has been the collaboration of directors of the First-Year Writing Program and the University Writing Center with Academic Testing Services to define the scope of essay exams used in the Freshman College Composition CLEP (College Board's College-Level Examination Program); we built the platform to which Shoes Online tests are submitted, and we trained those who score the essays. This new essay component provides a more rigorous test than the all-multiple-choice option previously offered. In 2003, the university's distance education unit jumped at the chance to work with us. Currently, while the hybrid program handles admissions and enrollment, its instructors also read and respond to the writing of the students enrolled in the distance sections. This makes for a near-seamless integration of our hybrid and our entirely online courses.

Not only was Gouge unfamiliar with the genesis of the program, her analysis is based largely ...
... on misreading or misidentifying the genre of a limited number of sources she cites as evidence. These sources include two chapters published in a 2005 anthology and a set of Web pages posted on the Texas Tech English department website. Both of the chapters and the Web pages cited were written between 2000 and 2005. The Web pages were largely informal and blog-like; they contained discussion of some features that were included in our courseware in a different form than discussed, and some that were considered but never instituted. These pages were removed from the public website by early 2007. The more significant deficiency, though, is the implication throughout Gouge's article that what she examines represents a finished project. Gouge ignores the probability that the Texas Tech program had changed since her sources were written; indeed, her statement that "we are indebted to Discount Shoes ICON the term that described the program until fall 2006 and other early program innovators for helping us consider what we value" suggests that the program is static, complete. Yet Fred Kemp, principal author of the "program website" referred to repeatedly by Gouge, explains that the pages represented just the opposite. Kemp describes these pages as "a semi-formal brainstorming, less an assertion of any conclusions than a desire to open up the reasoning process. Much of our explanatory material was purposefully left open-ended and speculative. It's understandable that people who take it as some sort of definitive history would get the wrong idea". These pages, then, could be used as the basis for discussion, but should not have been considered the final word. Take for example Gouge's description of the third-read process. Both the process and the number of third reads that had occurred had changed by the time Gouge accessed Kemp's page, more than four years after it was first created. Because most of the pages did not include a "last updated" notation, it is regrettable that Gouge did not solicit current information from program administrators before submitting her article for publication. She had several chances to do so, given that entries in her list of works cited indicate at least one revision in fall 2008. Had she contacted program administrators then, we could have discussed with her the nature of those Web pages and the findings of the Council of Writing Program Administrators consultant-evaluators' report (completed in April 2006 but still listed as "forthcoming" at the time she drafted her article).

We might also have examined changes to the courses and program that had occurred since those Web pages and chapters were written, or considered student evaluations of the courses. Given the conclusions that Gouge draws about grading in the hybrid program, she might have been surprised to find that students' evaluation of the hybrid courses were more positive than their evaluations of the courses during the last semester before the transition. But she didn't ask.