Baruch Technology Conference Presentation
9/3/2004
Quality of student writing was assessed using measures of length, breath and
depth. Depth was measured by the amount of time (number of sentences) a student spent
discussing a single idea. Breadth was determined in the number of relevant points
(different ideas or themes) an individual student made on a given topic. Length was
measured in the number of sentences (complete and incomplete) present in each posting.
The comprehensiveness of the answer evaluated the number of different points the
students made about the question in a single answer. Questions were open-ended
questions without a “correct” answer.
At the end of the Fall 2003 semester, students were asked to evaluate the course
with a series of opened questions. These questions were posted on Blackboard as part of
a weekly discussion. Three random groups of 25 students from the Fall 2003 course were
selected to have their responses analyzed for length, depth, and breath scores.
Results
During the first semester the IDS component of the Psychology course was
offered, only 35 percent of students not concurrently enrolled in Public Administration
participated in the discussion board. Fifty-seven percent of students enrolled in both
Psychology and Public Administration participated. In the Fall of 2003 students were
required to participate in the IDS discussion. Eighty-nine percent of students participated
in the discussions at least once. Fifty-five percent of students answered at least five of
the eleven discussion questions. However, only 13 percent of the students enrolled in
psychology answered all the questions posted on the discussion board.
Three sections of students from each Fall 2001, 2002, and 2003 course were
randomly selected for evaluation of the content of their responses. Entries were
Convention