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Program certification

SpeakWrite™ Program Guidelines

Students completing majors in SpeakWrite Certified Programs automatically fulfill the WVU General Education Foundations (GEF) writing and communication skills requirement. A SpeakWrite™ certified program will include:

  1. A Program-wide Emphasis. SpeakWrite activities are meaningfully and intentionally embedded into half or more of the courses and curricula across the unit's major program(s) of study. Students are also familiar with PACT as a way to analyze purpose, audience, conventions, and trouble spots.
  2. Explicit Program Learning Outcome(s). The Program Learning Outcome Goals for the major (on which annual assessment activities are based) include at least one communication skills goal.
  3. A Connection to Assessment. Department-level assessment reports for a SpeakWrite-certified program annually include a measure of effective communication outcomes for students in the major (e.g., faculty-defined criteria used to assess a sampling of projects; collections of perceived learning based on surveys, focus groups, self-assessments, etc.).

SpeakWrite™ Program Certification Process

Submit an application in Word to SpeakWrite@mail.wvu.edu
  1. Include the program name in the subject line (e.g. History BA Application for SpeakWrite Program Certification)
  2. State the program learning outcome goal (or goals) for the major that explicitly references communication skills; this language probably exists already your department's annual assessment report.
  3. Illustrate/describe how SpeakWrite approved courses constitute half or more of the courses in the program of study that students pursuing this degree will take before graduation.  To do this step, you might simply copy and paste text from the "Requirements and Catalog Information" box in the Undergraduate Catalog.  Please highlight SpeakWrite certified courses in yellow.
  4. Identify at least one assessment measure that will help your program see how students are doing in achieving the program's effective communication goal(s). This is your starting point; your measures evolve from year to year. (e.g., faculty-defined criteria used to assess a sampling of projects; collections of perceived learning based on surveys, focus groups, self-assessments, etc.).
Please allow two weeks (10 working days) for a response to your program submission.

SpeakWrite™ Program Continuity

  •  Each certified program is responsible for its own year-to-year continuity and assessment.  These annual steps are based on the program's initial application. (Please see the steps above.) 
  • Every three years, the SpeakWrite Advisory Board will ask programs to demonstrate their ongoing commitment to the SpeakWrite initiative with a short re-certification report.  The report should explain how the major continues to meet the general SpeakWrite goals. In addition to periodic reviews of the program's SpeakWrite-certified course offerings, commitments might include one or more of the following : surveying faculty about their SpeakWrite courses; encouraging or providing professional development related to writing or speaking; surveying students about their perceived learning; using faculty-defined criteria used to assess a sampling of projects; organizing focus groups; gathering self-assessments; etc.