Page 115 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of the New Media on Writing Assessment

82 CHAPTER 3

e-text is an impossibility. I also want to believe there are ways for
compositionists to assess students' e-texts without overriding stu-
dents' ownership. Although from reading accounts in the national
news weeklies and in the Chronicle of Higher Education these last few
years, the present climate in higher education makes me think that
students having complete responsibility for their e-texts, including a
strong say in their assessment, is still in the far future. Writing fac-
ulty are seeing a greater emphasis on certification and accreditation
on their campuses; with that type of attention to official legitima-
tion in the learning process, thinking about writing assessment as
being anything more than a rubber stamp frequently seems diffi-
cult. However, this current state of hypercertification in education
should not prevent compositionists from envisioning what an en-
riched assessment plan—one that includes full student ownership of
the e-text—could look like in the years ahead.
When Edward M. White discussed assessment and power in his
book Teaching and Assessing Writing (1994), he offered two con-
vincing claims: "If you really value it, you will assess it" and "What
you assess is what you value" (pp. 292-293). Instructors who
teach in computer- enhanced composition classrooms and who
promote an evaluation plan that accommodates the principles and
values of networked writing need to keep these points in mind. For
Composition to shift its vision toward meaningful ways to mea-
sure writing development in a technology-enhanced environment,
it will take scores of instructors— individually at the local level and
collectively at the national level—to initiate conversations about
those processes, characteristics, and purposes valued in e-texts.
Part of that conversation must be how Composition can appraise
electronic texts without relying on antiquated terms and beliefs.
Throughout this chapter and the book, readers will notice that
the word product is never mentioned in relationship to students'
electronic writing. This has been intentional. Composition still
overvalues the product in evaluation settings even though the dis-
course centers on process. Holistic readings of essays and portfolios
continue to focus on the "finished" pieces. Some institutions persist
in requiring multiple-choice skill tests as barrier or placement ex-
ams. These events remain although Composition's dominant rhet-
oric over the last 25 years or so has been centered on process. To
return to an old logical saw called the law of noncontradiction,
something cannot be one thing and its opposite. Composition can-