Page 100 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of New Media On

WHO OWNS THE WORDS? 69

greater control over their writing can also frustrate many aspects of
typical writing assessment practices. In these instances, alternative
assessment possibilities must be in place. One such possibility might
be for instructors to section off some private space in an online class-
room—perhaps a folder or location within the virtual class—that is
password protected and only the faculty member and those students
who wish to keep their work separate have access to the space. A sec-
ond prospective idea could be to have these students upload their
work directly to the instructor's private working space on the cam-
pus network for evaluation (this is only workable for institutions
that provide faculty with their own area on the campus system). An-
other viable method is to separate assignments into uploadable and
nonuploadable categories, with the explicit understanding that
uploadable assignments are for public display and response. Other
workable solutions exist, depending on the local conditions at the
college or university, and composition specialists need to plan ahead
for students who may wish to exert their control over the work they
produce in an internetworked writing class.
Students who actively pursue their authority and their intellec-
tual property rights have never been a concern in more traditional
assessment settings. Historically, writing assessment impedes stu-
dent agency—although, in more recent movements, like the portfo-
lio system, evaluation now grants more student agency than in the
past. Yet even this move toward more student-centered assessment
in the portfolio does not accommodate resistant students who refuse
to provide their instructors with a final portfolio or who offer up an
incomplete portfolio. In standard writing assessment procedures, a
student's lack of a final portfolio to grade or submission of an in-
complete portfolio is treated usually as a failing contribution. To
pass a class or to fulfill barrier requirements, students are expected
to complete the final assessment procedure in a multiple-choice, es-
say, or portfolio form. Intellectual property concerns are not an is-
sue here, nor is student authority over the writing. Students are
expected to do what they are told regarding assessment or face the
consequences. If a student does not want completed electronic as-
signments made public and no other outlet is made available for re-
view other than web publication, what then? Does the student fail?
Receive a grade drop? To date, with the University of Nebraska-Lin-
coln case, the courts have sided with the student's right to privacy in
resisting publication of her work on the Internet, even for class