Invitation to Colleges and Universities to Participate in the Consortium for the Study of Writing in College

We invite you to participate in an unprecedented opportunity to learn about writing and the teaching of writing at your institution.

Background
The Council of Writing Program Administrators and the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) have partnered to develop a set of 27 questions about writing and its teaching across the curriculum. In spring 2008, we administered these questions to 82 US colleges by adding them to the regular NSSE questions. The responses of 23,000 students provide the broadest snapshot so far of the writing that US undergraduates do. (Learn more . . . .)

This website will continue to develop as the WPA-NSSE collaboration develops. Our thanks to Glenn Blalock for putting this website together and helping keep it up to date.

The Opportunity

Your institution may join a consortium of baccalaureate-granting institutions that will administer the 27 writing questions to their students in Spring 2009. The results will portray writing and its teaching at your school. Because the students who complete these questions will also have answered all of the regular NSSE questions, you will be able to look at correlations among responses to both sets. (Learn more about the benefits of joining.)

Your institution will also receive identifying information for each student respondent. Consequently, you will be able to study your students' responses to the 27 writing questions in relation to other information your institution has about them, such as their majors, GPAs, demographic characteristics, and so on.

Joining the Consortium for the Study of Writing in College
To be able to participate in the Consortium for the Study of Writing in College, your institution must do the following:

• Administer the NSSE core survey in Spring 2009. (The 27 questions cannot be administered by themselves.)

• Register for the consortium between September 5 and October 5. The consortium will become one of your institution’s three “comparison groups.” (Each institution may select up to three.)
  • (Learn more about registration and fees.)
  • (Learn more about consortia and comparison groups.)
  • Join no other consortium. (An institution may join only one consortium.)

Steps for You to Take

• Contact your Institutional Research Office to determine whether it will administer NSSE in Spring 2009.

• Urge the office to join the consortium.  (Learn more about how to convince your institution to join.)

• If your institution wishes to join the consortium, ask your IR Office to register by visiting the NSSE Institutional Interface and signing up for the consortium at the "Profile" section. If you have questions, you can receive further instructions and guidance by emailing NSSE Consortia Managers Dan Bureau and Tony Ribera (consorti@indiana.edu).

• If your institution does join the consortium, please email Chuck Paine (cpaine@unm.edu), coordinator of the Consortium for the Study of Writing in College (this is not mandatory, but we'd appreciate knowing who has signed up).

Conclusion
This invitation comes from the four of us, who have worked most closely on this project: Chuck Paine (consortium coordinator), University of New Mexico, cpaine@unm.edu; Bob Gonyea, Center for Postsecondary Research, Indiana University-Bloomington, rgonyea@indiana.edu; Paul Anderson, Miami University (Ohio), anderspv@muohio.edu; Chris Anson, North Carolina State University, chris_anson@ncsu.edu. Please write if you have questions or suggestions.