ABSTRACT

In this chapter, the authors examine how their annual assessment of the student portfolios is always ultimately a self-assessment practice that leads to sometimes productive and sometimes unresolved discussions about the curriculum and related instructional practices. Programmatic self-assessment in professional and technical communication presents a dilemma for the faculty involved because the unit of analysis is much different from what the authors as individual instructors are conditioned to think about, such as assessing the performance of an individual student, the success of an assignment, or the success of an entire course in a given semester. The conversations initiated by programmatic self-assessment seem difficult because our field lacks scholarship that considers how programmatic/ faculty participant identities are shaped in curriculum-committee discussions. The chapter describes the behind-the-scenes reflective discourse that has shaped and continues to shape the identity of the professional and technical writing program at Utah State. It addresses the inherent difficulties of programmatic assessment or, more accurately, programmatic self-assessment.