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3.5: Executive Summary

  • Page ID
    7135
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    The Executive Summary serves as a context for the Proposal and the rest of the project. It is usually a specific history of what has (or has not) been done to address the problem or need. In general, the Executive Summary gives a timeline of events, identifies people, and otherwise narrates the background for the project. It answers the question, “What has happened so far, and who has been included when, in relation to this proposal/problem?”

    As a summary, this is a short section (1 page maximum) that tells the reader a little background or history of the problem.

    Example \(\PageIndex{1}\): Executive Summary

    In 2004, a Writing Center was established and a director for the Center was hired. Also in 2004, the university hired a composition specialist to coordinate the improvement of the program a little at a time. The Writing Center has aggressively sought to aid students and to advertise its offerings. After the Center was successfully established and the composition specialist was in place, a program was designed to stabilize the placement of incoming freshmen into writing classes. Two pilot systems were used: one was a “directed self-placement” process and the other was a sample writing system. We found that the sample writing worked well enough for the size of incoming classes, but the “directed self-placement” is better for larger incoming classes (above 200). The result of this placement adjustment was an increase in the number of sections of Fundamentals of Writing. The next step was to establish writing classrooms in computer rooms. This is now done with half of the College Writing 1 and Fundamentals of Writing classes. The English department then decided on a standard reader to help make those courses more consistent.

    After an accreditation visit, a plan to assess learning across the university was created. This plan featured writing as one of three components that help assess student learning. It eventually came to be modeled after a national accreditation plan, which includes a pre-test/post-test pattern. The learning assessment plan also calls for a midlevel (sophomore) writing assessment.


    This page titled 3.5: Executive Summary is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Stephen V. Poulter.

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