Page 147 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of the New Media on Writing Assessment

114 CHAPTER 4

Last, deeply assessing writing for adequacy meets the demands
for establishing construct validity. Because evaluators can link a
theoretical framework to the assessment mechanism—in this in-
stance, the body of information existing about writing in net-
worked space, the growing collections in visual rhetoric, or the
work done in media literacy describing the effect of media conver-
gence on alphabetic literacy—the results become even more valid.
The assessment team can explain the relations between what hap-
pens in the students' e-texts and other variables that exist in the
theories being applied to study the writing. Providing construct va-
lidity in deep assessment reflects a more authentic assessment ex-
perience because not only are instructors evaluating what they
value in an e-text, but the assignments and activities also demon-
strate to students and observers what is valued in a text or a course.
Applying construct validity in deep assessment respects both the
students' development of multiple literacies through the writing
process and the writing instructors' judgment that students can
perform a cluster of writing tasks in cyberspace.
Technological convergence has transformed the text. Of that,
most have no doubt. Writing instructors who work in computer-en-
hanced classes recognize that there is a range of modifications that
occur in the writing process when students shift their composing
practices from pen, paper, and an implied audience to keyboard,
screen, and an actual audience. To make others across departments,
campus, and society realize that these changes happen in students'
assessment as well, compositionists familiar with these two technol-
ogies must transform assessment, because that is the language of
administrators, university boards of trustees, and state legislatures.
Collectively, compositionists who have expertise in computers and
writing assessment must argue that deep assessment of students'
online writing reflects the ultimate performance-based assessment
for the following reasons:

• Instructors can examine complex learning outcomes and stu-
dent abilities in writing beyond traditional pen-and-paper as-
signments.
• The focus of assessment is placed on process, which is critical
for students' finished projects to function properly (e.g.,
graphics appearing correctly in web sites, Java applets that run
and do not crash a user's machine, MOO sites that carry out an