Page 131 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of the New Media on Writing Assessment

98 CHAPTER 4

noted, these informal, conversational pieces when threaded together
in an archive form an "essayistic artifact" (1999, p. 38)—a local nar-
rative that presents a history of the course work that does not ap-
pear in the portfolio. An essayistic artifact like a class's listserv
archive becomes important in evaluation to examine how student
writers develop a consciousness about their assignments and how
students' various rhetorical and structural movements toward
writing a longer e-text unfold over the course of an assignment. It
makes sense for writing teachers to include a document like a listserv
archive in an electronic assessment to account for change and
growth in students' writing, yet how many compositionists do this?
Not many—if any at all. From the various e-portfolio samples I've
seen as online representatives for conducting an evaluation of net-
worked writing, no links exist to a list archive. In fact, most student
webfolios look like digitized versions of the common paper portfo-
lio—something that Batson (2002) encouraged. This suggests that
writing faculty may be missing rich sources of qualitative data to
support assessment decisions.
Evaluation discussions must also extend to design and content
concerns in more formal web documents. There are clear differences
between writing online and writing on paper, as outlined in chapter
2. Authentic assessment for internetworked writing has to account
for the changes in style that occur when students create mundane
e-texts. There can no longer be face validity connected to e-texts be-
cause writing instructors can no longer rely on assessing only the
surface structures of their students' online assignments. More com-
prehensive feedback mechanisms need to be created to explain to stu-
dents and to skeptical faculty members and administrators that real
writing happens in electronic classroom spaces.

DEVELOPING "DEEP ASSESSMENT"

Because technological convergence brings changes to the text and
to the students' writing processes, it becomes critical for writing in-
structors who are interested in pursuing computer-enhanced com-
position classes to contemplate alternative assessment strategies
beyond those that already exist. These newer strategies have to
build on the flexibility found in portfolios, be manageable enough
to incorporate into an active writing classroom, be able to address a
full range of formal and informal networked writing contexts, and