This chapter argues that as primary stakeholders in writing program assessment, students and instructors need to be included proactively in assessment research. However, little research has been done to determine how to accomplish this methodologically even though assessment affects pedagogical practices, student populations, and public opinion about what constitutes good writing. Instead of traditional quantitative, psychometric research, the author argues assessment practitioners need to utilize local opportunities to discover native needs. He presents a program assessment project as an example of assessment research that focuses on local, contingent populations. Focus groups of students and teachers were used to create a dialogic conversation between stakeholders, and the results were used to design a new course in an existing developmental program—one that consciously and methodologically responded to both students’ and instructors’ needs.
Studying students' opinions : using surveys in writing program assessment