Efficacy of an Online Writing Program on URM Students in Engineering

Recently, universities have explored using online technologies to increase instructor efficiency and improve student performance. One such technology is the Educational Testing Service (ETS) web-based service, Criterion. Criterion is an online writing service whose purpose is to help students improve their grasp of the English language through offering critical, detailed feedback in the areas of: grammar, spelling, mechanics, usage and organization, and development. With Criterion, students get the benefit of additional writing practice without adding to the instructor's workload, allowing instructors to focus on the content and style of students' work. To assess the effectiveness of the Criterion writing program, our researchers used the program's analytics to gauge student proficiency, use, and the effectiveness of the program. Criterion provides the instructor with each student's progress from the moment of assignment submission. This allowed researchers to track the number of submissions each student needs to submit an acceptable writing assignment. In this study we compiled all of the data from Criterion and tracked the number of submissions and types of errors and sorted them by major and ethnicity. A high percentage of San Jose State University (SJSU)'s incoming freshmen are remedial in English or mathematics. Furthermore, at SJSU underrepresented minority (URM) students have notably higher remediation rates; 70% of African Americans, 60% of Hispanic students, and 50% of Asian Americans require English remediation during their first year, compared with 31% of Caucasian students. Many of these students are U.S. educated English learners with lower English skills than Native English students. They often struggle to complete their English and writing requirements, which negatively impacts their retention and graduation rates. As an online program that offers none of the bias present in traditional university classes, URM students using Criterion do not feel intimidated or overwhelmed. Additionally, the program is set in such a way that a student may use it as many times as needed to learn at their own pace. It effectively assesses student work and provides opportunities for them to learn from their mistakes, while its structure allows for specific, constructive feedback from faculty.