Page 31 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of New Media On

XXX INTRODUCTION

recognized that the cross-impact of technological convergence via
the computer is one aspect of writing assessment's "fourth wave"
(p. 500), in which noncanonical, hybrid texts like e-mail, hyper-
text, MOOs, blogs, or other web-based works challenge established
methods of evaluation.
Yancey is correct in her observations. These newer electronic texts
do challenge traditionally established methods of evaluation. How-
ever, writing program administrators and faculty need to be aware
that from the point of recognizing convergence, a workable assess-
ment project for networked writing will most likely require an entire
generation (a period of 20-30 years) before wide-scale adoption oc-
curs and habituated practices related to the fourth wave of writing
assessment take hold. For many of us who are teaching now, that
time frame nearly represents our entire academic life.
Still, this does not mean that those of us currently teaching in net-
worked classrooms or evaluating electronic texts under various as-
sessment models cannot put forward new directions for some future
hybrid form of networked writing and assessment. We should. Ac-
tually, we need to provide models that try, fail, and succeed in some
areas as convergence unfolds. There are too many outside of Compo-
sition who will put forward trends in both networked writing and
writing assessment that run counter to the pedagogical principles
inherent in each aspect of writing instruction. Our history shows
this to be true in the past. Our literature shows this to be true in the
present. Writing teachers have the ability to enact changes in the
classroom that affect the future, and this ability includes discovering
effective ways for blending networked writing and assessment.
For most of the last decade while the two technologies have been
simultaneously evolving, many in the forefront of both writing as-
sessment and networked writing instruction have displayed
technomyopia. In the field's literature, the leading proponents for
each side have overestimated the classroom potential for their re-
spective forms of technology and have chided the opposition when
the other side's technology falls short of expectations. The language
of "promise and paradox" (Selfe, 1997) echoes in much of Composi-
tion's literature on computers and writing. The promise and para-
dox discourse reflects the puzzlement and excitement writing
teachers felt in the early stages of computers and writing instruc-
tion. Anecdotal evidence worked well to introduce writing programs
and their faculties to the potential for computers in the writing