Online Directed Self-Placement
This is not a module primarily about Directed Self-Placement. It’s a module on Online Directed Self-Placement. If you’re interested in Directed Self-Placement (DSP), take a look at Roger Gilles and Dan Royer’s excellent McGraw-Hill Teaching Resources module by going to “Why Placement”, go to their own resource page , or read their book, Directed Self-Placement: Principles and Practices. For a quick explanation, click here.
In the attempt to put DSP online, though, many of
the issues naturally resurface that occur in face-to-face DSP: how to communicate the realities of
first-year writing, how to coach or guide so that students see who they are as
readers and writers, how to ensure the greatest success for the greatest number
of students. On the other hand, putting
DSP online can help us think about a whole other set of issues beyond DSP: communicating the nature of a writing program
with a wider audience, creating virtual environments conducive to learning,
creating the right balance between face-to-face interactions and virtual
interactions, testing out theories of virtual rhetoric.
Online DSP is relatively new. The first school to implement DSP online that
I know of is the
University
of Colorado-Boulder. Lonni Pearce.
First-Year Coordinator, Program for Writing and Rhetoric. Lonni.Pearce@colorado.edu. Also Patty Malesh: patricia.malesh@colorado.edu.
As you read through the various
sites, you will discover quite a range in approaches both to directed
self-placement itself and to the process of putting it online. To some extent the differences have to do
with how the DSP program creators conceived of DSP, and to some extent the
differences have to do with differing technological strategies or
resources. Some sites have a very
pared-down approach, asking just a few questions on a couple of screens. Others become very elaborate, requiring
students to take online grammar quizzes or write in response to a brief
reading. Some programs require
relatively little time and effort after they are set up, while others are
designed to involve the WPA in potentially time-consuming advising. Most see only advantages to putting DSP
online, while others see some drawbacks due to time commitments from the WPA
or, potentially, the loss of the personal connection. Some programs like
Regardless of the range of ways that online DSP
can look, none of the directors mentioned, as a disadvantage, that students who
placed themselves did less well than students placed conventionally. However, I know of no documentation of
changes in student success when a program went from DSP to online DSP, and in
three of the five cases presented on this site, the programs began DSP in an
online version, so there was nothing to compare anyway. However, at SHU we ran a pilot in which 220
students placed themselves and the remaining several hundred students were
placed using the old system--the Accuplacer battery of computer-scored essays,
sentence-skill test, and reading test.
This pilot provides some evidence related to student success and
attitude. When I compared the two
student groups—those who were placed using online DSP and those who were placed
using Accuplacer—the difference in their GPA was statistically completely
insignificant. This analysis would suggest that online DSP can reproduce the
success of a regular placement system—even when 25% fewer students chose the
6-credit version of College English I than would have been placed there using
the old placement method. Besides, as
Royer and Gilles point out, success can be defined in a variety of ways not
limited to grades and pass/fail rates.
Student attitude, as measured by an end-of-term survey was gratifying,
since 90% gave the online placement process some sort of positive rating (80%
rated it positively or very positively) and only 5% gave a negative
rating.
Questions to Start Discussion
Even with the apparent success of online DSP at
these five institutions, the fact remains that there appears to be no empirical
studies comparing face-to-face DSP with online DSP. Given that we are at the early stages of
DSP—and the very early stages of online DSP—it would make sense to identify
issues that should at least theoretically be examined and to consider them
carefully when moving to an online DSP approach. The first five questions below continue
issues related to DSP itself; the remainder focus on issues related to putting DSP
online.
1. The complexity of decision-making. Some DSP administrators have questioned the model of DSP offered by Royer and Gilles. They suggest an approach that involves greater opportunity for student writing and self-reflection (Liewecki-Wilson, Sommers, and Tassoni) or more extended interaction between student and placement counselors (Bedore and Rossen-Knill). How can the process of DSP give students an enhanced picture of their own needs and give placement counselors an enhanced understanding of students’ abilities and priorities? Does creating an immediate context for reflection—having students write an essay and reflect on their confidence, read a college-level student essay, or take a grammar quiz—inform incoming students about the nature of the challenge of first-year writing classes at their institution? Specifically, do they help students who may come from schools of vastly different levels of academic rigor?
2.
Institutional setting. Is
DSP just not a good fit at certain institutions? Generally, it has been tried at non-elite
four-year schools. Faculty from two-year
schools I’ve talked to have dismissed DSP out-of-hand. Yet see Liewicki-Wilson, Sommers, and Tassoni
and Fallon. In what ways may classism and
racism influence administrators’ perspectives on students abilities to make
good decisions for themselves? Do
students place themselves differently depending on whether the basic writing
course counts toward graduation?
3.
The role of self-efficacy (or, more generally,
self-beliefs). Although self-efficacy theory provided an
important underpinning for Royer and Gilles in their rationale for DSP, the
implications of this have not all been teased out. I’ve seen a student with a 620 verbal SAT
score place herself in a basic writing course because she could not write as
well as her friends. To what extent do
students’ beliefs about their writing differ from their actual abilities? What kinds of students are more apt to
misjudge their abilities? What
consequences are there to classroom dynamics and student success when students
place themselves as much by self-beliefs as by actual ability?
4.
The usefulness of the profile questions designed to help students choose between courses
for well-prepared and basic writers. All
DSP programs, online or otherwise, have students reflect on a series of
questions about their writing and reading experiences, yet to my knowledge no
empirical evidence has been reported about whether there are meaningful
correlations between any of these questions and student placement or student
success in first-year writing courses.
Are there significant correlations?
What types of questions really help students reflect on their abilities
and needs? Would students find it useful
to reflect on their high school academic habits, their priorities, the academic
standing of their high school, their confidence in succeeding in new
environments?
5.
Extrapolation
of DSP principles. Can student decision-making
be extended beyond self-placement to decisions made within the basic writing
course or when to exit it?
6.
Face-to-face vs. online interaction. In their
seminal CCC article on DSP, Royer and
Gilles open with a lengthy narrative of their information session with incoming
freshmen. What happens when face-to-face
interaction disappears? What happens
when the faculty member who can answer students’ questions is just a series of
words on a website or, at best, an online video presentation? Does online interaction, which requires more
comfort with reading, disadvantage weak readers who most need guidance?
7.
Home atmosphere vs. school atmosphere. The
face-to-face experience happens in a school setting, with other students, in
the school the incoming freshman has chosen and is aspiring to do well at. Whatever distractions would normally be
present in the home environment must, to some large extent, be mitigated by the
focus created by being in the new school setting. What effect does this change of setting have
on how seriously students take the placement process or on how well they can
concentrate?
8.
Role of technology in reducing or enhancing
communication. Since Seton Hall’s online DSP survey is among
the five presented in this website, I don’t mind saying that they generally
provide a straightforward translation of in-person materials to the
Ethernet. Is this translation
comprehensible? Yes. Thoughtful?
Yes. But does it take advantage
of the technology that makes eighteen-year-olds spend hours online? Not really.
A quick look at resources such as those listed below will convince
anyone that there is much more we can do to communicate effectively with
incoming freshmen. What kinds of web
design might better communicate your values? The importance of placement? An
impression that your writing program (and writing) is dynamic and engaging?
9.
Meeting stakeholder priorities. The
impetus to try online DSP on three of the five campuses was pressure exerted from
outside the writing program itself: the
need to free up time for an administrator, for example, or a change in campus
politics. What goals do you wish to meet
by putting DSP online? Which entities on
campus have a stake in the placement system?
How can the WPA proactively engage those entities so that developing an
online DSP program meets the needs of all?
Certainly some of the programs here have worked collaboratively to the
benefit of all.
10.
The directedness of directed self-placement. How much
does putting the process online lead to students’ being more apt to “blow off”
the DSP process? How important is it to
make sure students consider all the information that WPAs think is important
for them to consider? Put another way,
how directed should DSP be? And how does
direction change when it is put online?
On a campus-wide level, to what extent do other entities advise
students? How should advisement, or
coordination of advisement, be built into the system that a WPA develops?
Other Resources for
Online Directed Self-Placement
Web Resource for DSP
Royer, Daniel, and Roger Gilles. “Why Placement.” McGraw-Hill Teaching Composition. http://www.mhhe.com/socscience/english/tc/royer/GillesRoyerModule_revise.htm
Royer, Daniel, and Roger Gilles. “Directed Self-Placement.” http://faculty.gvsu.edu/royerd/dsp/why.htm
Print
Resources for DSP
Bedore, Pamela, and Deborah F. Rossen-Knill. “Informed Self-Placement: Is a Choice Offered a Choice Received?” Writing Program Administration. 28.1/2 (2004): 55-78.
Blakesley, David, Erin J. Harvey, and Erica Reynolds.
“Southern
Lewiecki-Wilson, Cynthia, Jeff
Sommers, and John Paul Tassoni. “Rhetoric
and the Writer’s Profile: Problematizing Directed Self-Placement.” Assessing Writing 7 (2000): 165-183.
Royer,
D. J., and R. Gilles. “Directed Self-Placement: An Attitude of Orientation.” College Composition and Communication 50.1
(1998): 54-70.
---,
eds. Directed Self-Placement: Principles
and Practices.
Web Resources for Online Teaching and Web Design
“Distance Learning Best Practices Debate” (see
section on The Future of Immediacy and Instructional Research)
www.aace.org/pubs/webnet/v3no2/3=2DistanceLearning.pdf
“Online Pedagogy: Theories & Best
Practices” http://www.tn.regentsdegrees.org/faculty/pedagogy.htm
“TLT/Seven Principles Library”
http://www.tltgroup.org/Seven/Library_TOC.htm