Page 165 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of the New Media on Writing Assessment

132 CHAPTER 5

sider what qualities of each electronic genre are identified as being
important or effective in reaching a real audience. Performance as-
sessment that only centers on the finished product allows students
to forget what they have done at each level, so many are unaware of
the overall impression their e-text has on an audience.

Inauthentic Assessment Is Created by Instructors
Only Assessing The Product

E-texts should be considered as works in progress and need to be
measured accordingly. Writers tinker with their web sites and list
moderators tend to the mechanics of their discussion lists on a regu-
lar basis. Hypertext authors revise links or add new ones. Not ac-
counting for past and present revisions student writers make to their
e-texts is unrealistic in measuring a writer's growth. A semester's
time constraints already place a serious restriction on the students'
abilities to construct, revise, append, and submit electronic work for
a grade. Time is further constrained if the class is on quarter-term.
Some e-texts require writers to return again and again to shape the
finished product. Some e-texts, like MOOs, blogs, or highly interac-
tive web sites, may never be truly finished. Although a final evalua-
tion is inevitable, and grading on promise or potential is risky,
instructors can use deep assessment to measure students' progress
to date. Compositionists can examine the archives to see how stu-
dents' works have evolved over the term and evaluate based on a
body of data, not just a single project.

A Full Range of Electronic Writing Is Rarely Included
in the Assessment

Unfortunately, when many students submit their e-portfolios,
writing instructors only see the completed work and not all the re-
visions that happen. Also, most electronic portfolios reflect essay-
istic writing. This privileges standard academic writing genres and
alphabetic literacy over more mundane texts that commonly ap-
pear in electronic communication. Missing in most e-portfolios are
the e-mail exchanges, the list messages, and the conference post-
ings, all of which are important traces of how students' finished
pieces evolve over a term. From these conversations and fragments,
faculty can decide whether the work is the student's own, whether