Rebecca Thourneberg and Karla Sanders have much to consider.

The pair, who represent the Committee for the Assessment of Student Learning, will meet with the Faculty Senate today to address the proposed revisions to the Electronic Writing Portfolio.

“The Electronic Writing Portfolio has been through a process of extensive revision, and CASL has been leading that revision process in response, pretty much, to the faculty,” said Faculty Senate Chair Lynne Curry.

She added Thourneberg and Sanders are visiting different constituents around campus, discussing the proposed revisions with them and receiving feedback from the constituents.

Today’s Faculty Senate will be held at 2 p.m. in the Booth Library conference room 4440.

Students can submit their papers electronically under the proposed revisions. Making stricter deadlines for students submitting a paper is another planned revision to the EWP.

“The problem was, in theory, we were supposed to be assessing a student’s paper written in our course that semester,” Curry said.

She said students were coming to professors to submit a paper for the EWP a semester or year later.

“We were just concerned that it didn’t really reflect their current state of writing,” Curry said. “If somebody is submitting a paper that they wrote as a sophomore but are submitting it as a junior, it makes them look like they are writing at a junior level.”

Students will also have to rework their submission if a professor deems it so.

“It is hard for us to accept something that says a student is writing badly, and then there is no effort to step in and help,” Curry said. “That is built into (the revisions) as well.”

Michael Hoadley, assistant vice president for academic affairs for technology, will also present on technology planning.

The comprehensive technology planning committee, formed in 2003, aimed to plot a direction for technology use at Eastern, Hoadley said.

He added the overall goal of the Comprehensive Technology Planning Committee was to create a report for the President’s Council and the Board of Trustees concerning the direction the committee wanted to take on technology.

CTPC gathered information from a variety of campus constituents on six topics regarding technology: Efficiency, system confidence, compatibility and standardization, communication and integration, and support and delivery of instruction, Hoadley said.

He added CTPC developed four elements that have to be considered when it comes to student learning and the use of technology after meeting with those constituents.

The CTPC then drafted a report in February 2004 to the Board of Trustees. The report included seven recommendations concerning the use of technology.

“The underlying belief was that the integration of technology into the campus environment would be made possible through several portals on entry into the system,” Hoadley said. “The critical element was to make sure the technology would be in place to provide a successful entry into the system at any point in time.”

Curry said Hoadley will discuss the progress made since the report was drafted, what still needs to be done concerning technology and some of the concerns towards the situation.

Hoadley has been talking to a variety of organizations around campus to get feedback on how the report should be updated or changed.

He added the report was never intended to last forever, but merely served as a foundation for Eastern’s direction with the use of technology.

“The (revised) plan will probably be similar in format, but it will provide more details about what is happening and serve as a guide for future decisions,” Hoadley said.