Page 148 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of the New Media on Writing Assessment

VALIDITY AMD RELIABILITY 115

activity, simple discussion lists that run most of the time with-
out failure, etc.).
• The emphasis on process and deep assessment offers a more
plausible, direct, and complete study of the types of literacies,
reasoning, and techniques writers use to communicate online
with real audiences.
• Infusing the composition course with computer-enhanced
writing activities motivates students to write, because genuine
readers exist for their work.
• Online writing is "real world" writing even though it takes
place in virtual spaces.
• Like other forms of authentic performance assessment, deep
assessment demands greater instructor time, involvement, and
effort to collect, code, and analyze the data.

Outcomes assessment is possible, and maybe even desirable, in
writing classrooms where convergence has taken place. However,
fair outcomes assessment of networked writing cannot happen as
long as older notions of validity and reliability are used to measure a
nonquantifiable, nonstandard writing experience. These new intel-
lectual projects come with the demand for developing suitable as-
sessment criteria and models that address the range of students'
processes, knowledges, and motivations when composing e-texts.
Without writing instructors rethinking the psychometric concepts
of validity and reliability in the age of convergence, Composition
Studies will become severely constrained and this will lead to an even
greater gap between classroom practices and evaluation. If the
commonsense beliefs about assessment and instruction still hold
true, then it is time that Composition redefines such central terms to
reflect the broader aims of literacy in the electronic classroom and
the changing shapes of the electronic text. We are on the cusp of
changing the nature of writing assessment in the age of technologi-
cal convergence; however, more work needs to be done. To do noth-
ing further limits innovative pedagogical practices, the possibility of
new scholarship, and the social values inherent in multiple literacies
to the political whims of administrators, pundits, philanthropists,
and policymakers.