Grading Changes after a Writing Faculty Workshop

After a workshop on student outcomes for the first-year writing course, the 28 faculty participants discussed the implications of “Development” for critical thinking. This case study of one college’s participatory exercise in improving writing found that although the RWU faculty lacked consensus on the definition, simply discussing topic of “Development” may have had the unintended effect of fewer A grades in the following semester. Unfortunately, the percentage of A grades ascended in the subsequent semesters to suggest that without reinforcement, faculty returned to grade inflation