The Wikiness

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Northern Illinois University Associate professor of English, Tom McCann, gave a wonderful “Administrator’s Academy” at Elmhurst College in March 2006 in which he outlined the basics of “authentic” writing assessments. (With the late Dr. Larry Johannessen and others, he has authored 2010’s The Dynamics of Writing Instruction: A Structured Process Approach for the Composition Teacher in the Middle and High School, a book I hope to one day read.)


In his presentation, McCann gave ten rules for quality authentic writing assessments:

• Base the assignments in “real-life” problems
• Make them multi-valent tasks, rich in opportunities and processes for assessment 
• Offer explicit criteria and expectations for scoring
• Make a culminating product that demands a solution to the problem
• Use informal formative assessments during process; let results inform revisions and adjustments
• Offer opportunities for kids to play to strengths
• “Welcome the unknown”– don’t narrowly prescribe responses
• Measure student progress toward target outcomes
• Work with colleagues to make them guaranteed valid and reliable
• Make students self-reflect and set goals for themselves; they thereby contribute to their own development

English teachers are supposed to foster authentic, complex thinking. It thus makes sense that our assessments require complex, authentic thinking to complete. Thank goodness for the English evangelists like Tom who lay it out there so well.