Corporate Advisory Boards, Portfolio Assessment, and Business and Technical Writing Program Development

Abstract

This article advocates student learning portfolios as an effective assessment technique and explains how instructors and administrators can devise a process that involves community partners in assessing student performance.Having community experts judge a student portfolio contest helps faculty identify standards for success that can inform decision making about course content and program offerings. The article discusses how to gain and sustain community involvement in program assessment and describes how portfolio assessment led to the creation of a technical and business writing advisory board at an urban university.

Bring Workplace Assessment Into Business Communication Classrooms: a Proposal to Better Prepare Students for Professional Workplaces

“…The value of collaborative assessment is likewise recognized by business communication teachers: Dillon (1997) involved community partners to assess student portfolios; Dyrud (2001) used peer reviews to give students nonevaluative feedback as well as help determine their group project grades; Pittenger, Miller, and Mott (2004) involved external consultants to teach students oral presentation skills valued in real workplace settings. These experiments not only led to targeted classroom learning outcomes-in terms of writing, group work, and oral communication-they also helped prepare students for collaborative assessment in their future workplaces.…”

“…There are several key reasons. First, as Dillon (1997) wrote, "corporate types" are not all "money-mongering" pragmatists, and workplace institutions "can and do contribute to student learning" (p. 50). The stereotypical views of industry "must stop if we are to realize the promise of assessment to change and improve higher education in this country" (p. 50).…”

Assessing excellence: Using activity theory to understand assessment practices in engineering communication

“…Portfolios, long used in composition courses as a means of more effectively reflecting the writing process and evaluating student learning, have also become important modes of assessment within technical and professional communication over the past decade [16][17][18][19] As both Williams and Coppola note, portfolio approaches to assessment in technical communication typically align more effectively with our current understanding of texts as mediating tools [16,19]. Students intentionally construct a portfolio over time and reflect on the choices involved both in the act of writing and in the act of assembling the portfolio.…”