Measuring Foundational Inquiry Skills in First-Year College Composition Courses

Foundational inquiry skills (FIS) are a critical component of the first-year composition course. Understanding how to navigate resource repositories, assess the quality of information, synthesize source material, and communicate information with stakeholders are critical FIS that ensure future academic success regardless of discipline. Furthermore, these FIS are increasingly critical to students’ ability to engage as responsible social citizens both inside and outside the classroom space. Despite the importance of these skills, current tools to measure students’ FIS are primarily discipline-focused and/or lack validation. Drawing on multiple years of pre-, post-, and retrospective-pre data, this paper uses Rasch measurement theory to construct and assess the quality of an FIS scale that can be leveraged in inquiry-based first-year college composition classrooms and other entry-point courses focused on FIS.