rock and hard place

[Scott LaBarge <labarge@U.Arizona.EDU>]

Hello again!

First, thanks to all who have already given me some leads to follow and
some thoughts to mull over.  You've all been very helpful!

Second, you've been so helpful that I simply have to ask for more advice.
I confess I was somewhat disheartened that everyone denounced impromptu
essay exams with such unanimity, because the situation in my college is
such that I don't know what else we could sell.  We're looking into this
at all because the college has decided it nolonger wants to take part in
the university wide writing exam that presently serves as a de facto exit
requirement.  The students who most need writing attention typically
postpone taking the exam until there is not much chance for remediation,
and because the exam is administered to every student in the university,
it is geared to test only the most general writing skills. Thus our
college (Social and Behavioral Sciences) wants to set up its own
assessment tool that we will apply earlier (hopefully as an entrance
requirement for adopting a major rather than as an exit requirement) and
which will test more specifically for competency in writing skills
appropriate to the relevant disciplines (e.g. ability to describe
statistical information in prose.  I personally would like to see them
describe statistical info in poetry as well, but I am in the minority ;)

Whatever we end up with, there will be a mid-career assessment tool in
place, and the question then is whether it will be the university's or
ours.  I very much like the idea of using portfolios rather than exams,
but I'm not sure the faculty would go for it. The number of majors in
these disciplines is huge, and it's also very uneven; there are thousands 
of psychology majors, and only a handful of, say, cultural studies majors.
I'm not sure we could convince the faculty of the smaller majors to help
review the portfolios of majors from the larger departments, and I can't
imagine that the faculty of those departments would agree to review their
own without assistance.

So one way or another our majors will be facing some kind of writing
assessment tool.  Givenm this situation, what would you recommend?

Again, thanks for your time and advice.

Scott LaBarge