Page 116 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of the New Media on Writing Assessment

WHO OWNS THE WORDS? 83

not say that writing teachers are focused on teaching process but
assess on product and still be a valid method. The rhetoric and the
practices need to be aligned.
The first stage in realigning writing assessment in an age of tech-
nological convergence is to realize that there are significant differ-
ences between pixelized texts and papertexts. When the expectations
for literacy shifts from one primary source to a multitude of sources,
as is the case with writing e-texts, writing specialists need to con-
sider a complex range of institutional, curricular, instructional, and
social elements involved that affect the assessment.
A model I want to present here is grounded in the work of Tim
Peeples and Bill Hart-Davidson (in Allison, Bryant, & Hourigan,
1997). Peeples and Hart-Davidson offered a strong heuristic for ap-
proaching papertext assignments that account for various factors
in the evaluation process. Their example addresses the four critical
constraints—expertise, available artifacts, institutional-classroom
limitations, and programmatic-curricular concerns—that affect
how compositionists rate a text. To extend this idea to reflect the
convergence between computers and assessment in the writing
classroom, the following additions must be included:

1. Features of the "expert" writer in networked space
• Is comfortable with using multiple electronic genres to suit
various writing purposes
• Has an awareness of and complies with diverse discourse
conventions related to writing and responding to different
discussion lists, chat, MOOs, and the like
• Recognizes that knowledge in electronic environments is lo-
cal and contingent and is constructed by the group in which
the writer participates
• Understands that each networked space maintains an episte-
mology, an ideology, a rhetorical structure, and subject
positionality (cf. Howard, 1997)
2. What student grading artifacts are easily accessible to the in-
structor in networked space
• List, chat, blog, or e-mail archives
• Web sites students build
• Hypertext or HyperCard projects
• Databases students build
• Electronic portfolios of individual student work