January Writing Program Staff Meeting Agenda, 1/20/2012, VM 101, 1:00 PM-3:00 PM  Agenda

1) Liberal Education Requirement (LER) results for this past fall’s classes are not yet available because Bill Leimbach says they have not all been submitted through GoucherLearn.  For now, if you taught 105 or 106, please be prepared to tell us the "NP rate" for your sections, together with comments on the causes.  Do you see any pattern in the “NP” decisions, including students who fail to make CWP because of not turning in the work, showing up for classes/conferences, etc.?  When all the LER data is available we will have to schedule another meeting to discuss them.

2)  Plagiarism—new trends?  This is Amanda's response to my request for a summary of recent cases sent to the Honor Board:

 "We have about the same number. Less lower level this year and more upper.  This year, so far, we have had about 12 cases."

Do you have strategies for unteaching the habit?  If you have any assignments or methods that you can share with us, please forward them to me and I’ll distribute them.

3)  Course evaluations—Fall 2011 overview of response rates by rank and by class.  Overview of my impressions that might help us to improve response rates and to improve the relevance, and the quality, of the responses.

4)  Class observation scheduling—I need to see as many of you teach as possible this semester to satisfy due diligence for RPT.  This includes Writing Fellows, and half-time and part-time instructors.  I teach at 9:55 and 3:00 TuTh, so I will need to ask other FT/TT members of the department to cover Jen’s 3:00 English 103, Ailish’s 9:55 English 105, and Susan’s 9:55 English 105.  For everybody else, I’ve worked out a tentative schedule.  Ideally, observations would be clustered together in mornings or afternoons of just a few days, but I also want to give you a chance to control which days I show up.  Between now and the meeting, please consult your syllabi and my list of dates below, and think about specific days you would like to rule out or in for observations, for any reason at all.  You don’t have to explain.  Here is my list:

MWF 9:00 Phaye

MWF 10:00 Mary Jo

MWF 11:00 Elizabeth, Charlee, Mary (MW)

MWF 12:30 Mina

MWF 2:30 Laura

TuTh 11:45 Kate, Carol

TuTH 1:10 Barbara, Jona

Because of my grading schedule, for MWF classes, Fridays are best, Wednesday are next best, and Mondays are almost, but not quite, impossible.  For TuTh classes, these are the plausible dates:  1/31, 2/2, 2/6, 2/8, 2/21, 2/23, 2/28, 3/1, 3/6, 3/8, 3/20, and 3/22.