1. Melanie Borrego, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of English and Associate Dean for Undergraduate

Education, School of Arts and Sciences, Brandman University.

2. Assessment of Program Learning Outcomes: As we were building and revising our Associate
of Arts in General Studies degree, we integrated both Communication Fluency (which we
called Written Fluency) and Use of Information Sources (which we called Information
Literacy) from the DQP in the signature assignment for English 104, the second course in our
two-course composition sequence.

3. This assignment is an 8-10 page literary research and argument essay, standard at most
universities. It requires the use at least eight outside, scholarly sources. Students work on the
assignment throughout the term, and it serves as their culminating assessment.

Students in English 104 have presumably passed the Rhetoric and Composition course. They
come to this assignment having already completed a more basic research essay and skills such
as organizing an academic essay around an arguable thesis, providing support with sources
they have identified, evaluated, and synthesized. In this assignment, they are asked to apply
those skills to more specialized research.

a) The Program Learning Outcomes being assessed here are adapted from the DQP:

Written Fluency: Compose written arguments that are coherent, grammatically correct, and
rhetorically aware.

Information Literacy: Evaluate and cite various information resources necessary to complete
an academic research essay.

b.) Course: English 104: Critical Thinking and Writing about Literature. This signature
assignment is due in the final week of the ENGU 104 course.

c.) Anyone assigning a research essay in a General Education course might find this
signature assignment and rubric helpful.


Background of Assignment: Students have worked throughout the term on identifying a topic,
constructing a thesis, working on and submitting a topic proposal with a Works Cited list, then
writing and reviewing a draft of the full essay before turning in the final for grading.

Rationale for Assignment: Research essay assignments are very common, and because they are
often poorly written and difficult to read, some instructors have begun to wonder whether or not
they continue to be necessary at the first-year level, or whether they might be too much to ask of
first-year students. Stanford Universitys Andrea Lunsford researched studies conducted on the
writing of first-year college students going back nearly a century. She found that the error rate has
barely budged, despite the fact that todays students are writing more challenging, complex essays
about six times longer than a century ago (Thompson, 66). The notion that the work may be too
difficult for students, then, does not seem to be supported by the evidence.

In the past, students were not required to do so much scholarly research so soon in their academic
career. However, the daily use of the internet by students (indeed by most citizens in America),
means that knowing how to consistently identify and evaluate the sources of ideas, quotations, and
evidence is more pressing than in years past. Students are researching all the timethese kinds of
assignments are a way to show them how to search more intelligently and to use more reliable,
credible evidence to help form and support their arguments. The importance of research goes essays
goes beyond the internet, of course. When thoughtfully constructed, they can help students evolve
from thinking that they can only study the thoughts of great thinkers to beginning to realize that they
can add their voice to the conversation.

Works Cited
Thompson, Clive. Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better.
New York: Penguin, 2013.