Summative Student Self-Evaluation

The D.I.Y.* Guide to Writing Your Summative Student Self-Evaluation

(*Do-It-Yourself—with plenty of optional built-in support from the Writing Center)

Facts About Your Summative Student Self-Evaluation (SSSE):

Your Summative Self-Evaluation is a reflection on yourself as a learner, rather than a chronological summary of the classes you took. It is an opportunity to establish a framework for readers to understand the rest of your transcript. The SSSE gives you a chance to highlight aspects of your education at Evergreen, particularly if your programs may not clearly evidence your focus in a particular field.

Your Summative Self-Evaluation will be the first evaluation in your official transcript. The transcript also includes your self-evaluations, faculty evaluations of your work, and the class description of each program you took, chronologically, with your most recent program at the top.

Two single-spaced pages is a good general length for a summative self-evaluation. Although there is actually no official limit on the length, the Office of Registration & Records strongly encourages students to keep it under 5 pages, and of course if it is concise, your audience will be more inclined to read it in its entirety.

The deadline for turning your SSSE into Registration & Records is the last day of the quarter following your graduation. This includes summer quarter! If you graduate at the end of spring quarter, you have until the end of summer quarter to get yours in.

Writing a good Summative Self-Evaluation takes time. Keep in mind that this document requires a lot of self-reflection. Give yourself the space of multiple drafts to articulate what you know about yourself; this can be a challenging (and very rewarding) undertaking. Find a process that works for you. In this packet you will find some strategies that may be helpful.

Tools in Your Hand: The Contents of This Packet The D.I.Y. Guide Handout (this sheet): To walk you through the process Evaluation Resource Central: An explanation of Summative Self-Evaluations (SSSEs) Five-week Process Syllabus: A suggested approach to crafting your SSSE Four-Column Grid Activity: A place to start! Author’s Note THE PROCESS that follows is a more in-depth explanation of the Five-Week Process Syllabus in your packet. You’ll notice that we encourage dialogue with a Writing Center peer tutor about your writing—often. Discussing concerns, asking questions, and explaining yourself further to a supportive peer or advisor can help to identify gaps between what you want to say and what you have actually written. Although this packet outlines a weekly process with concrete stages, your process may not be so linear. A revision session will likely create another draft, and so on. We present the process as we have in order to emphasize the full development of your ideas early on, before moving to punctuation-level changes.

Week 1 Focus: Getting Organized and Reflecting on your time at Evergreen

Meet with a tutor to set up a plan for yourself! Scheduling future weekly appointments can be a very helpful way of planning time for this work. (If you struggle with procrastination, don’t avoid showing up to appointments out of shame for what you didn’t do—come so that you can get on track. A tutor’s role is to support your work and goals.)

The Four-Column Grid Activity is one of the handouts in this packet. This activity is designed to help you get some big-picture perspective of our time at Evergreen, in order to help you get ready to write a first draft. Doing a little self-inventory of the programs, assignments, and themes of your time at Evergreen will help you to refresh your memory and make choices about how you’d like to represent your growth in your SSSE.

Week 2 Focus: Drafting

This stage is about beginning to write about your experiences. The purpose of drafting is to generate material, so you can then go back and refine, revise, and re-organize your ideas to create a clear picture of what is most important to you. Editing will come later! Give yourself the time and space to see what your story is before you start trying to polish it.

It can be helpful to begin by creating a statement of purpose for yourself. Finish the following prompt: “The Summative Self-Evaluation is an optional document the student creates for the Evergreen transcript. I have chosen to create a summative self-evaluation because…” It may be useful to first have a discussion with your academic advisor and/or a tutor about the function of a summative self-evaluation before creating your statement.

A possible focusing tool or prompt for beginning to write your first draft are the Five Foci of Teaching and Learning at Evergreen and the Six Expectations of Evergreen Graduates. These are listed on the “Evaluation Resource Central: Summative Student Self-Evaluations” page included in this packet (also available online at http://www.evergreen.edu/writingcenter/evaluationssummative). Review these guidelines, and then define them for yourself, in your own words. These self-defined values of learning can be an organizational tool to focus the ideas in your summative self- evaluation. For example, you could write about how you developed personally in each of these five (or six) areas through your experiences at Evergreen.

Week 3 Focus: Continue Drafting

You can make an appointment with a tutor at any stage of your process, but we highly recommend making a tutoring appointment at this stage (Not because you need a tutor to write, but because the work that you do in a session can add perspective and clarity to the development of your writing). Talking with a peer tutor about the ideas, challenges, and questions in your head can help you make choices about how to convey in writing what is most important to you, and how to decide what your next steps are.

Use the Author’s Note (included in this packet, and available on the Writing Center’s website) as a reflective tool to check in with yourself about what you know about the piece of writing in front of you. Your Author’s Note also helps a tutor to be clear on the concerns and feedback most relevant to you at this time.

Peer Review is another technique that can be helpful. In Peer Review, participants share their writing and carefully listen to each other in order to give specific, constructive feedback. Author’s Notes also support this process. If you have friends or classmates who are working on summative self-evaluations, you can make a group appointment at the Writing Center to do a Peer Review session, facilitated by a tutor.

Week 4 Focus: Re-Vision

Now that you’ve developed your ideas, you can shift your attention to their form. It’s time to make choices about organization and presentation. What does a great summative evaluation do? What does yours do? What do you want it to do?

Audience is a consideration; do you currently have future employers or graduate schools to whom you are planning to send your transcript? At this time you may not be clear on who your audience is, or you may have multiple audiences. An academic advisor, career development counselor, and/or a trusted faculty member can help you decide how to structure your summative self-evaluation, depending on your intended audience.

“Glossing,” also known as “reverse outlining,” is a strategy of reading over your draft, and jotting down in the margins a phrase or sentence to summarize each paragraph or section. This gives you an idea of what you are working with, and by “zooming out” your attention from individual ideas to the relationship they have with one another, you can begin making choices about the order of your ideas—maybe that middle paragraph would actually make a really great introduction! Creating multiple drafts gives you the space to work on defining, crafting, and refining your ideas and insights about yourself. If you feel “stuck” or unsure about how to move forward, make an appointment with a tutor to help get yourself back on track.

Week 5 Focus: Editing

At the stage of editing, you have done the reflection necessary to feel confident about your ideas and their relationship to one another. At this point, the focus is on crafting their presentation so that you are presenting your thoughts in the most effective way. This is supported by punctuation, variety in sentence lengths and forms, precise and powerful vocabulary, smooth transitions between different perspectives or topics, and a strong concluding finish.

Are there any individual words or sentences you can tinker with? Try reading your summative self-evaluation aloud; are there any places where you trip on your words? You can even look at how your words and sentences sound as they are read; how can you improve the rhythm of your writing? Meet with a tutor if you would like some support on making these editing adjustments to your summative self-evaluation.

Before turning your summative self-evaluation into Registration & Records, meet with your academic advisor or supportive faculty, in addition to peer writing tutors, to review your work. Give yourself as much time as possible, and reach out for any support you need to finish this and finalize a document you are proud of!

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at [email protected].

The Writing Center Library Room 2304 (360) 867-6420 www.evergreen.edu/writingcenter