Assessing and teaching what we value: The relationship between college-level writing and critical thinking abilities

Washington State University (WSU), has developed two large-scale assessment programs to evaluate student learning outcomes. The largest, the Writing Assessment Program, diagnoses student writing abilities at entry and mid-career to determine the type of support needed to navigate the expectations of our writing-rich curriculum. The second, the Critical Thinking Project, has developed an assessment instrument, the WSU Guide to Rating Critical...