Page 10 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of New Media On

Preface

About the time I started researching the connections between com-
puter technology and writing assessment in earnest, Dennis
Baron's essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education appeared (No-
vember 20,1998, p. A56). Baron's observations that essay-grading
software packages based on predicate analysis or keyword in con-
text algorithms would somehow streamline faculty grading pro-
cesses and make those processes more consistent (i.e., efficient)
seemed as on target then as they do today, 5 years later.
What has changed in the last 5 years, though, is the continual
merging of computer technology and writing assessment in the
composition classroom. This merging of technology is called "con-
vergence" in media fields, and the idea of convergence is incredibly
appropriate for what happens in the writing classroom. In conver-
gence, more than simple blending takes place; often, a re-visioning
or reconceptualizing of practices and products occurs. For Composi-
tion, convergence offers writing teachers a way to redefine literacy
through the electronic text, or e-text. The e-text can span many gen-
res: blogs, MOOs, web pages, e-mail exchanges, text messages, and
so on. E-textual writing requires instructors to reconceptualize both
the text and the criteria under which the text can be evaluated. Con-
sequently, as the product changes, the practices underlying the cre-
ation of these new products should change as well. So too should we
expect a change in the practices for evaluating electronic texts be-
yond layering holistic scoring models, analytic rubrics, or portfolio
assessment onto the work. Convergence has brought the field to the
era that Kathleen Blake Yancey described as the "fourth wave" in
writing assessment (1999).

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