1. Writing experiences of undergraduate students
in the Colombian higher education:
understanding developmental changes of two
former recent students in applied social
sciences
Elizabeth Narváez-Cardona

2. Context of the inquiry project
This exploratory project arises in the context
of the emerging field on teaching and
researching on higher education writing in
Colombia.

3. Context of the inquiry project
1. Regarding public policies, the government
has decreed since 2010 assessing
compulsorily undergraduate students in
their last year of the programs before
obtaining their degrees.
The assessment on writing abilities in
Spanish is one of the components of this
public policy.

4. Context of the inquiry project
2. Some studies have reported that
Colombian higher education is not providing
extensive or curriculum resources to learn
how to write across undergraduate
experiences, neither the emerging field has
conducted developmental studies to explore
across time what is undergoing with the
students in their tertiary experiences.

5. Justification
Consequently, the field on
Colombian higher education
writing lacks of conducting
developmental studies enabling to
boost curriculum debates as well
as discussions upon the current
scopes of the external large scale
assessment on writing.

6. The project scope
The current pilot project aims at
understanding developmental changes of
two former recent students in applied
social sciences in Colombian Higher
Education.

7. Project goals
The research aims are:
a) Describing narratives on
undergraduate writing experiences
from student perspectives;
b) Inferring potential relationships
between undergraduate writing
experiences and writing tasks of the
current large scale assessment;
c) Identifying commonalities and
differences between undergraduate
writing experiences and workplace
writing experiences.

8. Methodological approach
Two former outstanding recent undergraduate
students of my home university were asked for
participating voluntarily.
Data collection was conducted in Spanish through
a questionnaire as well as writing samples.
This project asked for the participants to create a
small portfolio with:
The most difficult, the easiest, and the most
meaningful texts that were written during their
undergraduate experiences.
Given their professional experiences so far, they also
were asked for selecting a successful text.

9. Methodological approach
Textual analysis was conducted in the
following stages:
1) The questionnaires were read to find
differences and commonalities between
the two narratives of the participants:
writing challenges
processes or other participants involved
in their writing experiences
constrains for writing argumentative
texts
emotions and identities tied to writing.

10. Methodological approach
The writing samples were read and analyzed
based on a rubric with qualitative criteria:
Topic
Year of studies in which the document was written
Document length
Genre
Possible strategies used to write at that time
Textual structure
Writer identity emerging according to the type of
writing
This textual analysis of the writing samples
aimed at describing the documents, rather
than evaluating positively or negatively their
linguistic and rhetorical features.

11. Chronological context of the cases
Findings and participants´ profiles

12. Commonalities and differences between
Findings undergraduate writing experiences

13. Commonalities and differences between
Findings undergraduate writing experiences

14. Commonalities and differences between
Findings large-scale assessment writing experiences

15. Commonalities and differences in the
Findings workplace writing experiences
A successful text

16. Summary of the main changes identified in the
Findings participants’ writing samples

17. Conclusions, reflections & implications
The undergraduate writing experiences
The undergraduate writing experiences of
both participants seem not having focused
on specialized written genres neither for
academic settings or professional contexts.
These former students mostly were using
writing in higher education to learn rather
than learning how to write.

18. Conclusions, reflections & implications
The undergraduate writing experiences
However, the participants highlighted that
their research reports were valuable
writing experiences.
This might suggest that further research
projects could be conducted to explore
what and how institutional practices are
carrying on reading and writing practices
for this type of genre in Colombian higher
education.

19. Conclusions, reflections & implications
The large-scale assessment writing experiences
The public report released by the Colombian
government in 2012 asserts that the best scores
on writing had been obtained by students in
humanities, social sciences, journalism, and
advertising.
The hypothesis emerging from this project is that
the actual Colombian curricula in Journalism are
obviously tied to writing practices.
Further research projects are needed to explore
how writing development ensues in Journalism
according to Colombian curricula.

20. Conclusions, reflections & implications
The large-scale assessment writing experiences
The public guidelines of the large-scale
assessment on writing have asserted that what is
assessed is the preparedness of the
undergraduate students to fulfill the workplace
writing demands (ICFES, 2012).
This project shows that the type of writing
demanded by the test is far for being the type of
writing demanded in workplace settings.

21. Conclusions, reflections & implications
The workplace writing experiences
Clearly, in both cases, the participants
are coping currently with professional
communication genres given their
responsibilities in their workplaces.
According to the writing samples
analyzed, it is evident that the
participants have undergone sharp
growth and changes to fulfill their
workplace writing demands.

22. Conclusions, reflections & implications
Given that most of their
undergraduate experiences seem
having been focused on writing to
learn rather than learning how to
write, further research projects are
needed to explore how these former
students have tackled the transition
and transferability between their
undergraduate and workplace
experiences, which seem having
entailed strong ruptures.

23. Conclusions, reflections & implications
Finally, since these participants were
outstanding students, further research
projects to collect the same type of data
could be useful to explore differences among
disciplines, as well as among “average”
students with disabled students.