Assessing Students' Writing and Public Speaking Self-Efficacy in a Composition and Communication Course

One avenue for assessing learning involves evaluating self-efficacy, as this psychological belief is a strong predictor of academic achievement. As such, the purpose of this study was to evaluate writing selfefficacy and public speaking self-efficacy in a composition and communication course. This course is structured to develop both writing and public speaking competencies; the research sought to determine whether students believed they were leaving the course feeling more confident in their capabilities within each respective academic domain. Results (N = 380) from preand post-test data suggest that students’ reported writing and public speaking self-efficacy significantly increased over the semester. Additionally, students’ mastery experiences, operationalized as informative essay and informative speech grades, were related positively to changes in self-efficacy at the end of the semester. These results offer three implications for teaching within this course design and structure. Hart Research Associates (2016) reported that of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) member institutions, 99% assessed general education learning outcomes related to students’ writing skills and 82% assessed oral communication skills (e.g., public speaking). Together, these outcomes represent two of the top four skills desired for undergraduate students (Hart Research Associates, 2016), echoing Booher’s (2005) position that “the ability to express yourself orally and in writing is the single most important skill to career advancement” (p. 13). Consequently, many institutions have shifted towards general education courses planned around principles of multimodal communication, highlighting written and oral outcomes (Reid, Snead, Pettiway, & Simeneaux, 2016). This focus on a variety of skills has led researchers to refer to this design as the basic composition and communication Assessing Students’ Writing and Public Speaking Self-Efficacy in a Composition and Communication Course 28 course (BCCC; see Housley Gaffney & Frisby, 2013; Strawser, Housley Gaffney, DeVito, Kercsmar, & Pennell, 2017). This nuanced design reflects the changing needs of university administration (Valenzano III, 2013) by building competencies across multiple modes and forms of communication. Such changes in curricula necessitate additional approaches to the assessment of students’ achievement of competence regarding these two communication skills. This study meets this need by investigating students’ perceptions of their writing and public speaking competence in a BCCC. To this end, the researchers utilized the concept of self-efficacy from Bandura’s (1986, 1997) social cognitive theory (SCT) as a framework for understanding students’ capabilities. Although self-efficacy does not directly evaluate learning, it has been strongly linked to academic achievements (Klassen & Usher, 2010; Multon, Brown, & Lent, 1991) and conceptually framed as an affective learning outcome (Housley Gaffney & Frisby, 2013). The findings should provide support for the BCCC as an important course in developing students’ communication skills as part of their general education requirements. Basic Composition and Communication Course Design At the University of Kentucky, the BCCC is a combination of the introductory writing and oral communication courses required by the university’s core general education curriculum. As part of a yearlong, two-semester sequence, students are exposed to both written and oral communication content with the goal of cultivating skills in each area. The first course, primarily taken by first-year, first-semester students, concentrates on the process of informing, describing, and explaining topics objectively. It generally is expected that these students will subsequently enroll in the second course in the sequence, which introduces persuasion and argumentation. Both courses emphasize multimodal communication, with an overlapping focus on writing and speaking content. For example, the first course in the sequence includes two major projects assessing writing and public speaking skills. The first project is a research-based informative essay; the second project involves the presentation of an informative speech. While instructional content prior to the submission of the essay is focused largely on developing writing skills (e.g., grammar, sentence clarity), content following the essay includes a greater proportion of information about public speaking (e.g., delivery, presentation aids). Building to these projects, students also apply knowledge through smaller scaffolding assignments designed to promote mastery. This means that content generally is focused in one academic domain, yet students are exposed to assignments involving principles of both disciplines across the semester. For example, early in the course, students complete a written rhetorical analysis, in which they critique a speech. This analysis provides an opportunity to introduce and discuss principles of public speaking, as well as a template for applying grammatical and syntactical writing knowledge gained prior to the major essay project. Many safeguards are in place to ensure students have the desired expertise upon completion of the course, including instructor training, ongoing assessment, and standardized rubrics. However, mixed research findings raise questions regarding whether students are sustaining the competencies they develop over the length of the course (Housley Gaffney & Frisby, 2013; Housley Gaffney & Kercsmar, Assessing Students’ Writing and Public Speaking Self-Efficacy in a Composition and Communication Course 29 2016; Strawser et al., 2017). Contrary to courses centered solely on public speaking, the inclusion of a composition requirement introduces additional objectives and outcomes that may influence how much students feel they have learned and developed (i.e., Social cognitive theory, self-efficacy; Bandura, 1986, 1997). SCT posits that human thought and action result from a system of dynamic interplay between personal, environmental, and behavioral factors in a process labeled triadic reciprocity. As a personal factor, self-efficacy refers to “one’s perceived capability to accomplish given academic tasks and can be thought of in terms of can do statements” (Usher, 2015, p. 148). Scholars treat self-efficacy as a universal belief contextualized across specific academic domains; it reflects separate changes in the development of writing and public speaking skills (Bandura, 1997). In other words, it is possible for students to feel confident in one area while feeling simultaneously inadequate in another. When writing and public speaking skills are taught in the same course, the assessment of domain-specific outcomes is needed to ensure student growth in each area. Writing self-efficacy has been extensively studied as a predictor of achievement (Pajares, 2003), and research supports the notion that students’ beliefs about their writing capabilities are related to their composition performance (Shell, Colvin, & Bruning, 1989). Students who rate themselves higher in writing self-efficacy are more likely to write better essays than students who see themselves as less competent (McCarthy, Meier, & Rinderer, 1985). Similarly, research examining the relationship between public speaking self-efficacy and achievement generally shows a positive association. Dwyer and Fus (1999, 2002) demonstrated that public speaking self-efficacy was positively correlated with cumulative course grade at two different times within a semester. Specifically, public speaking self-efficacy was associated positively with students’ grades at both the middle and the end of the semester. Together, these results show promise in assessing public speaking self-efficacy as an indicator of future student success. Mastery Experiences and Self-Efficacy Communication researchers have investigated several antecedents to the development of students’ selfefficacy. These sources include instructor relevance (Weber, Martin, & Myers, 2011), classroom justice (Vallade, Martin, & Weber, 2014), and clarity (LaBelle, Martin, & Weber, 2013) as well as student state motivation (Weber et al., 2011) and academic entitlement (Vallade et al., 2014). However, the notion of student performance on a task as an influencer of self-efficacy is seemingly absent from the instructional literature. This absence comes in contrast to SCT, which emphasizes the importance of performance accomplishments, or mastery experiences, as a source for cultivating capability beliefs (Bandura, 1977, 1997). Mastery experiences represent engagement with tasks that provide authentic evidence of mastery in a domain. Despite a tendency for communication research to value learning and performance as outcomes (Clark, 2002), a SCT framework including mastery experiences suggests that it may be prudent to use past performance as an indicator of future potential (i.e., self-efficacy) for assessment. It is important to note that mastery experiences are not synonymous with gaining new skills (McCroskey, 1982). Rather, self-efficacy stems from reflection on one’s experience, as success or failure prompts a judgment of one’s competence (Pajares, 2006). Thus, mastery experiences can also be conceptualized as Assessing Students’ Writing and Public Speaking Self-Efficacy in a Composition and Communication Course 30 a result of one’s level of achievement (Bandura, 1977). Usher and Pajares (2008) further described this process: After students complete an academic task, they interpret and evaluate the results obtained, and judgments of competence are created or revised according to those interpretations. When they believe that their efforts have been successful, their confidence to accomplish similar or related tasks is raised; when they believe that their efforts failed to produce the effect desired, confidence to succeed in similar endeavors is dimini