Composition results 'consistent'

By Josh Rutenberg     8/19/10 7:00pm

New students received the results of their summer composition exams last Tuesday. This year, 67 percent of students who took the exam passed, a decrease of 4 percent from last year's scores. Despite the slight drop in passing grades this year, Barrett said performance remained consistent across student demographics compared to previous years' exams.

Out of 950 new students, 884 elected to take the exam. During the summer, students are allotted five days to compose an essay on a given topic using several readings aimed at assessing the student's strength in expository writing skills.

Jones freshman Rebecca Nelson said she found the exam challenging, but learned more than just writing skills from the experience.

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"The topic was genetic engineering and I had never read about that," Nelson said. "It was really cool and I got to learn new things. I felt like I could talk about it afterward."

Those receiving a grade of "pass" or "low pass" may exempt the COMM 103: Academic Writing and Argumentation class, while those receiving a grade of "not satisfactory" must take the COMM 103 class in order to graduate. Nearly 25 percent of new students who took the test received a "pass," while 42 percent received a "low pass" grade.

Any student with a "not satisfactory" grade or who opts not to take the exam must take COMM 103 before graduation. In all, 362 incoming students will need to accommodate COMM 103 in their schedules.

Barrett said students may opt to not take the test for a variety of reasons. She said some students are admitted late, some decide they want to take COMM 103 and some students simply cannot fit the exam into their summers, despite the exam's flexible scheduling. The exam is offered twice during the summer, once in June and again in July.

This marks the second year the exam was hosted on the Program for Communication Excellence's website. Students could take the exam, see their grades and view comments about their essays on the website. Prior to 2009, Rice partnered with Massachusetts Institute of Technology's website and posted results on Owlspace. Using Owlspace to host such a large database led to many problems, Barrett said.

"We had problems in the past, and needed to smooth out those problems, so we moved over as soon as possible," Barrett said.

Barrett said no problems had arisen with the new website, even with an increase in the number of students taking the test.

Students seemed to have no significant complaints about the new system.

Nelson said the process of taking the exam and receiving scores went smoothly.

The number of COMM 103 sections offered this fall will increase to 16 from 12 last year. Each section caps the number of spots at 15 students for a total of 240 spaces. Barrett said the limited class size allows students to receive individualized attention.

Barrett said that most students will be accommodated by the increase in sections, since some students also opt to take the course after their freshman year, but that the Program for Communication Excellence will adjust the number of sections in future semesters to meet the anticipated needs of students. With the recent addition of COMM 300: Communication in the Digital Age and COMM 415: Medical Communication to the course offerings of the Program for Communication Excellence, Barrett acknowledged more instructors would need to be hired to meet demand for additional COMM 103 sections.

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