Incentivizing Multiple Revisions Improves Student Writing Without Increasing Instructor Workload

Abstract

Previous research has shown that when students are required to submit a draft and a revision of their writing, large proportions of students do not improve across drafts. We implemented a writing assignment in which students were permitted to submit up to four optional drafts. To encourage substantive revisions, students were awarded additional points if they received all points on the grading rubric. Based on the grades of the instructors, 31% of students eventually earned perfect scores in this assignment, compared to 13% in a typical single revision assignment. Permitting students to submit up to four optional drafts resulted in nearly the same amount of grading for the instructor as requiring students to submit two drafts.

Format of Instructor Feedback on Student Writing Assignments Affects Feedback Quality and Student Performance

“…Thus, the seemingly greater lessons learned from electronic feedback on a different, earlier assignment did not transfer to subsequent writing. This lends further support to the suggestion by Stellmack, Sandidge, Sippl, and Miller (2015) that the process of revising writing after review should be viewed as a process whereby an author responds to and attempts to satisfy particular reviewers rather than a process in which writing ability itself is improved to any great extent.…”

Writing across the curriculum: A longitudinal assessment of psychology majors’ writing development.

“…It is also possible that instructors of courses across our curriculum did not focus their teaching or feedback on the specific writing skills assessed by the rubric we used, or that they did not provide sufficient opportunities for revisions that would enable students to practice and refine those skills. Research indicates that students’ writing can be improved through feedback and revision opportunities (e.g., Kellogg & Raulerson, 2007; Stellmack et al, 2015). Out of all courses sampled, the 300-level experimental psychology class incorporated the most writing instruction, feedback, and opportunities for revision on literature review type assignments, although this would have primarily occurred after the assessment was completed in this course.…”

“…Finally, having a detailed rubric with multiple criteria resulted in the discovery that students were not improving in all areas of writing equally; spelling and grammar improved the least, whereas organization and reasoning improved the most. Most previous studies of college writing improvement have only reported overall scores (Oppenheimer et al, 2017; Roohr et al, 2017; Stellmack et al, 2012, 2015). Our study adds to the work of Greenberg (2015), Haswell (2000) and Kelly-Riley (2015), all of whom used multidimensional measures of writing, though the assessed dimensions varied because our rubric was designed to be assignment- and discipline-specific.…”

“…There are numerous examples of studies done to assess writing improvement in individual psychology classes or as a result of specific instructional practices (e.g., Greenberg, 2015;Jorgensen & Marek, 2013;Limke et al, 2011;Stellmack et al, 2012Stellmack et al, , 2015. These studies assessed a variety of writing skills and processes specific to the field of psychology, ranging from students' ability to recognize grammar, mechanical, and reference errors (Jorgensen & Marek, 2013), to their abilities to generate APA style research reports and other writing samples that addressed specific prompts and included relevant content, sound reasoning and arguments, logical flow and organization, and/or proper voice, grammar, and spelling (Greenberg, 2015;Limke et al, 2011;Stellmack et al, 2012Stellmack et al, , 2015. Several of these assessments (e.g., Greenberg, 2015;Stellmack et al, 2012Stellmack et al, , 2015 incorporated detailed, multidimensional rubrics that instructors used to evaluate students and/or students used to evaluate themselves or their peers.…”

“…These studies assessed a variety of writing skills and processes specific to the field of psychology, ranging from students' ability to recognize grammar, mechanical, and reference errors (Jorgensen & Marek, 2013), to their abilities to generate APA style research reports and other writing samples that addressed specific prompts and included relevant content, sound reasoning and arguments, logical flow and organization, and/or proper voice, grammar, and spelling (Greenberg, 2015;Limke et al, 2011;Stellmack et al, 2012Stellmack et al, , 2015. Several of these assessments (e.g., Greenberg, 2015;Stellmack et al, 2012Stellmack et al, , 2015 incorporated detailed, multidimensional rubrics that instructors used to evaluate students and/or students used to evaluate themselves or their peers. However, none of these studies looked at writing development across courses as students progress through their psychology curriculum.…”