In Washington state (and elsewhere) numbers of faculty members are asking students to become more actively involved in the evaluation process by writing self reflective essays on their learning. In many classes and learning community programs, students develop and refine their self-evaluations in collaborative groups. In most learning community programs, students write student self-evaluations ("SSE's") at a mid-point in the term, and at the end, as well. The SSE frequently creates the occasion for faculty member and student to meet and discuss the student's progress in the class or program.

         "Prompts" for SSE's vary widely. Most faculty members report that they get the richest writing in SSE's when the question or prompt is open-ended.

Most faculty using SSE's want students to reflect and write on these kinds of questions:

·      What did you learn?

·      How well did you learn it?

·      So what now? What do you see as the next steps in your learning?

Examples of "prompts" included here:

·      End-of-course prompt used at Fairhaven College, Western Washington University.

·      Peter Elbow's suggestions for SSE's developed when he taught at Evergreen in the late 1970's.

·      Assignment for SSE essay to accompany a writing portfolio, developed by Kim Johnson-Bogart in the Interdisciplinary Writing Program, University of Washington (located at the end of her article).

         To be able to evaluate oneself fairly, candidly, and helpfully is a valuable life skill which will be an asset to you long after you leave college. This is perhaps the most important reason why Fairhaven requires a self-evaluation instead of a letter grade. The other reasons are that letter grades are too limited, too inaccurate, and too inflated.

         There is no single way to write a good evaluation. That will depend upon the course, your goals, your style, and your needs. The advice below is only that-advice. Do not follow it slavishly or respond as if it were an outline to be followed. And do not assume that you must touch on all of the points mentioned. A good evaluation selects the most important results of the learning process, and from this selection much else is evident. Give time and thought to what you write and care to how you write. A sloppy, careless self-evaluation filled with misspellings, incomplete sentences, and half-thoughts leaves a poor final impression even if you did very well in a course of study.

          A VITAL POINT: Try to write in a way which communicates information about the content of a course or independent study. Do not just speak in abstractions and personal feelings, such as "This class was extremely important to me because through discussion and the readings my thinking developed immensely." What subject? Which discussions? What did you read? think about what? developed from where to where?? A reader who does not know what the class studied should be able to gain an idea from your self-evaluation. One should be able to form some judgment about how well you understand a subject from what you say about it, not merely that you claim to understand it. In other words, BE SPECIFIC, BE SPECIFIC, BE SPECIFIC, BE SPECIFIC, BE SPECIFIC, and, finally, BE CONCRETE.

          One of the important skills in a good education is being able to ask the right questions. Likewise, writing a good evaluation depends upon good questions. In fact, one might begin an evaluation by inquiring "What are the important questions about this subject?", listing several, and then discussing some good answers. There are many problems and issues which one might address to oneself in order to trigger a good evaluation. Here are some-suggestions only:

·      Did I do more or less than was expected by the instructor? by me? Why, or why not?
·      This is a ____credit class, or about ____ of my study time this quarter. Did I give it that much time?
·      What do I now understand best about this subject? least well?
·      My strongest and weakest points as a student? What did I do to improve the weak points? What will I do next?
·      What do I need to learn next about this subject?
·      What was most satisfying about the class? most frustrating? your responsibility for each?
·      Has the course irritated you? stimulated you? touched you personally? Has it made you uncomfortable about yourself, about society, about the future, about learning? Are you the same person who began the class ten weeks ago? What's different?
·      What did you expect to learn? What did you actually learn? more or less, and why?

         To quote former Fairhaven dean Phil Ager, "It is a fiction to measure learning in a single way which therefore can be recorded by a single letter grade." Instead, he argues, there are at least four different kinds of learning:

Cognitive. Your new understandings and knowledge? What is the most important single piece of knowledge gained? What will you remember in a year? five years? How has your knowledge grown? changed? become more sound?

Skills. New skills gained? old skills improved? your ability to solve problems, think, reason, research? Did you actually use these skills? What skills do you need to develop next?

Judgment. Do you understand the difference between process and content? Can you apply principles? to other classes? life? If you took the class again, what would you do differently? Has your way of thinking changed?

Affective. (emotions and feelings) Did you change? your beliefs? values? Was the class worth your time? Do you feel good about it? the single most important thing you learned
about you? Evaluate your participation in discussion. Did you discuss and learn with other students? How has the course altered your behavior? Did you grow? shrink? stagnate? float?

Suggestions to Students for Writing Self-evaluation

         It helps to write evaluations in two stages. The first stage is really for yourself. So you can get things straight in your own head without worrying yet about what to write for the second stage: a transcript document aimed at the outside world. For the first stage, write quickly, loosely, and as much as possible without stopping. Don't even worry about mechanics, organization, or whether it makes sense. Don't even worry about whether it is true: sometimes blatant exaggeration or distortion is the only way to get your hands on a half-buried insight. The idea is to get your thoughts and feelings down on paper where you can see them and learn from them.

         Wait until AFTER you get that interesting mess written before going back over it to decide which things are true and which of those true things you want to share with strangers who will read your transcript. It will be easier to write appropriately for a transcript reader when you get the false and private things down on paper so they don't make fog and static in your head to confuse and slow you down.

         Save this first-stage writing for your portfolio. It will have lots of important insights that won't be in your transcript. Think about sharing much or all of it with your faculty member so as to help him or her write a better, fairer evaluation of you.

Useful Questions for Your First-Stage Self-Evaluation

·      How do you feel now at the end?
·      How accurate are those feelings?
·      What are you proud of?
·      Compare your accomplishments with what you hoped for and expected at the start.
·      Did you work hard or not? get a lot done or not?
·      What kinds of things were difficult or frustrating? which were easy?
·      What's the most important thing you did this period?
·      What bits of reading or lecture stick in your mind?
·      Think of some important moments from this learning period: your best moments, worst moments, typical moments, crises or turning points. Tell five or six of these in a sentence or two each.
·      What can you learn or did you learn from each of these moments?
·      Write a letter to an important person you studied, thanking the person for what you learned. Or telling the person how you disagree. Or telling the person how good a job he or she did.
·      Who is the person you studied you cared most about? BE that person and write that person's letter to you, telling you whatever it is the person has to tell you.
·      What did you learn throughout? skills and ideas. What was the most important thing? What idea or skill was hardest to really "get?" What crucial idea or skill just came naturally?
·      When they make the movie, who will play you? What's the movie really about?
·      Describe this period as a journey: to where? what kind of terrain? Is it a complete trip or part of a longer one?
·      You learned something crucial which you won't discover for a while. Guess it now.
·      Tell a few ways you could have done a better job.
·      What knowledge and skills will you need in five years? Did you learn any?
·      What advice would some friends in the program give you if they spoke with 100 percent honesty and caring?
·      What advice do you have for yourself?

Questions to Answer in Your Transcript Self-Evaluation

·      What did you do? Faculty members will include an official program description as part of your transcript, so you don't need to tell the core activities and reading. Just say whether you did them and go on to tell briefly the things you did that weren't part of the required core. Which activities were most important to you? You can cover this whole question briefly in a few sentences unless there is some complicating factor or a special reason to go into more detail.

·      What did you learn? skills and content. This is probably the main thing they need to know. And you probably know more than your teacher about what you learned. Tell a whole bunch of things briefly-perhaps just a list of bare phrases. But then zero in on at least one or two important ideas or skills and tell about them in some detail. IN effect, this part of your evaluation is a micro-essay-only a paragraph or two-that explains something you know. The bare list of things you learned is a TELLING to the readers, which they must take on faith; here you are SHOWING readers something you know and thereby proving it.

·      What was the learning process like for you?

·      What does it all add up to for you? Where did you come from, and where are you going?

Things to Keep in Mind

You are writing for strangers and officials: employers or admissions officers or faculty members at another school. Writing to official strangers sometimes freezes the words inside you so you can't write at all or else turns them to plastic so they come out all fake, bureaucratic, and untrustworthy. It may help to write as though you are writing a letter to a friend, loved one, teacher, or to yourself. This will not only help you to write more easily, it will also help your writing have some voice and sound like it comes from a real person. In revising, you can make whatever small changes may be necessary to fit your official audience but still keep the real voice in your writing.

Illustrate your generalizations with brief examples. You can get an event into half a sentence ("such as when I . . . ").

Tell things you are proud of. If you cannot think of any, think again. They are there. But also try to describe those parts of your performance that you are not satisfied with; or things you need to work on in the future; or things you would have done differently if you knew then what you know now. You are likely to sound dumb or dishonest if you cannot think of some things you could do better on the basis of experience.

Don't complain about how terrible the program or teachers were. It'll just sound like sour grapes and make readers think you blame things on others and don't accept responsibility for your own learning. Save those complaints for evaluations of program and faculty. If the complaints keep sneaking into your self-evaluation, stop and do a draft of your program and faculty evaluations. Get the complaints out of your system so you can focus your energies on what counts here: your learning.

Keep it short. Most transcript readers won't be used to reading these long complicated Evergreen transcripts and will be in a hurry. Cut out what isn't crucial. Tell the readers that if they want to know more, you have a portfolio to show them with longer descriptions of your learning and examples of your actual work. (And make sure you have one.) But don't be afraid to let them get a feel of you. You will come across strongest if you come across real. They need to trust you. The best way I know is to try hard for the real truth and to let yourself sound like a real person.

Don't type your transcript evaluation on the official form without getting feedback on a draft of it from your faculty member and at least one other student: what seems right and wrong? How does the writing strike them? The best way to get feedback is to get them to describe the person they find in the self-evaluation. Get them also to help you with awkward writing and mistakes in mechanics.

When you finally type it on the official form be sure to proofread it carefully and get someone else who is a good proofreader. Some transcript readers will be more influenced by mistakes in mechanics and typing and messiness than by anything else.

Post-write

Now that you have finished your essay, please answer the following questions. There are no right or wrong answers to these questions: we are interested in your analysis of your experience writing this essay.

1.      What problems did you face during the writing of this essay?

2.      What solutions did you find for those problems?

3.      What alternative plans for this essay did you consider? Why did you reject them?

4.      Imagine you had more time to write this essay. What would you do if you were to continue working on it?

5.      Rank 1 to 4 according to priority the following elements of composition in your revision plans, with 1 most important and 4 least important:

·      development of your thesis                                                             

·      organization of your essay                                                               

·      address to your intended audience                                                   

·      formation of your paragraphs and sentences                                     

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