The President's Award for Innovation recognizes ASU
individual employees or teams for innovations that improve the educational,
administrative, or other organizational processes through creative approaches.
ASU President Michael Crow presented the Award for Innovation to those who had helped administer and support Stretch, since it started in 1994.
Nomination for the President’s Award for Innovation: The Department of English’s Stretch Program
The Problem
During the years leading up to 1987, ASU’s Department of English had a major problem: too many students were failing the required ENG 101 and 102 courses (which sometimes were identified as “killer courses”).
No one seemed to know how to help more students succeed, so many students failed and left the university. This failure/retention problem was especially acute for those writers labeled as “basic writers”—students who had little academic writing experience in high school, who enrolled with low test scores and academic deficiencies, or who otherwise were seen as “at risk” in their university studies.
The university tried a number of approaches to try to help these students, finally in 1987 asking a local community college to teach ENG 071, a “remedial” basic writing class, on the ASU campus. Based on placement information from the Provost’s Office, about 20 percent of first-year students were placed into ENG 071. The hope was that such a class would better prepare ASU students for the academic writing they would be asked to do for their ENG 101 and 102 classes.
The results were dismal:
The percentage of students passing ENG 071 leveled-off at only 66
percent. Worse, not all of those who managed to pass ENG 071 continued
on to ENG 101, and many of those who did enroll in ENG 101 did not pass
that class . . . and often left the university.
In the end, of every 1,000 new students who took ENG 071, less than half (46 percent) managed to successfully complete ENG 101, and of those 460 students who did pass, only 280 remained at ASU to register for ENG 102—a “loss rate” of almost 75 percent.
An Original, Unique Solution
In the 1991-92 academic year, Director of Composition David Schwalm and future Director of Composition John Ramage designed and then piloted two versions of what they called the Stretch Program, ultimately deciding – based on that pilot project – that what ASU’s basic writing students needed was more time and more experience at constructing full-length, college-level writing assignments. The Stretch Program was subsequently proposed and approved by the university and the Department of English.
While many universities still had (and still have) community colleges teaching their basic writing students, the Stretch model was unique to ASU. The first class of the Stretch sequence was called WAC 101 (“Writing Across the Curriculum”) to reflect John Ramage’s involvement as director of ASU’s Writing Across the Curriculum program, and students received ASU elective credit for passing the class. Students who passed WAC 101 then enrolled in ENG 101 the following semester, usually with the same teacher and same group of students. The Stretch pilot (and other studies) demonstrate that students who remain with a cadre of the same classmates are retained at a higher rate; they also bond more effectively with the teacher, from the two semesters of working together.
In the fall of 1994, the full Stretch Program was implemented, with 510 registered students. Lecturer (and now Director of Writing Programs) Greg Glau was assigned to coordinate the program. Classes were capped at 22 students, so students could receive more individual attention.
In the fall of 1997, an ESL (English as a Second Language) component was added, for international students (who then take a WAC 107 – ENG 107 sequence of classes).
A note about the student population of Stretch: at ASU, students are placed into a writing class based on their standardized test scores. Students who come from high schools that are underfunded (which is often the case in Arizona) tend to test more poorly than those who come from more affluent and modern high schools. Students from groups traditionally under-represented at the university (Asian Americans, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans) also often come to ASU with the lower test scores – so more of them are placed into Stretch. In numbers, about 23 percent of ASU’s student population comes from the under-represented groups; in Stretch, nearly 40 percent come from those groups. Put another way, in an average ASU class, one in five students comes from an under-represented group; in Stretch classes, two in every five students come from one of those groups.
In effect, then, Stretch classes have the students with the lowest
test scores, who more often come from groups seen as “at risk” in the university
– the same group of students formerly placed into – and who often failed
– ENG 071.
The Results and Benefits to Students and to ASU
The data — both narrative student reports and statistical analysis — tell us that the Stretch Program has made a significant difference to ASU and to ASU students.
What Our Students Say
Each semester, Stretch students are asked to complete an anonymous
evaluation of the program. 89 percent of those completing these anonymous
surveys tell us they think their "writing has improved" because of the
program. Students note that especially they feel more confident about
their writing, they can expand and provide more detail, that their organization
has improved, and even that they see an improvement in grammar and mechanics.
As we might expect, most of these students say the program is effective
because of the extra time they receive to work on their writing (fully
40 percent of those students completing the survey cite the extra time
to be the "best thing" about the program). Students also point to
having the same teacher and same classmates for two semesters as positive
aspects of the program.
Statistical Results
The statistical results of Stretch have been no less than astonishing:
when we compare the Stretch sequence with the former ENG 071—ENG
101 sequence:
# of students # passing
percent
-------------------------------------------------
ENG 071, the last five years we offered it:
2581
1709
66.21 %
WAC 101, (fall 1994-spring 2002)
6343
5565
87.74 %
ASU writing students now enjoy greater success than they did under the previous model, passing WAC 101 at about a twenty-percent higher rate than they passed ENG 071. It’s clear that Stretch students benefit from the extra semester of writing experience, as they also pass ENG 101 at a higher rate than their “regular” ENG 101 counterparts – and this has been true for each year ASU has offered Stretch:
For each of the past eight academic years, Stretch Program students – those seen as most “at risk” at the university — pass ENG 101 at a higher rate than those who take “regular” ENG 101.
In addition, almost twice as many students are retained under the Stretch Program model:
Publicizing Stretch
For the six years he directed the Stretch Program, Greg Glau
worked to publicize it – starting with a 1996 article in WPA: Writing
Program Administration. This article and Glau’s conference presentations
engendered a number of requests for further information; Glau also focused
on and publicized Stretch is a variety of venues. Glau
A National Model
With the publicity Stretch has garnered, other colleges and universities
are putting such a model into place. While not every school with
a Stretch Program identically copied ASU’s paradigm, these colleges
and universities all base their curriculum on the Stretch model:
In summary, more than 6,000 students have enrolled in the Stretch Program, and many students who would have formerly failed at ASU have succeeded here: