Page 167 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of the New Media on Writing Assessment

134 CHAPTER 5

self-assess their efforts more thoroughly than one might first ex-
pect. Sometimes their judgments are made supportively, sometimes
teasingly, but their comments are always insightful in that they fo-
cus solely on how the e-text is or could be received by an audience. In
this process, validation does not come from me. Confirmation of
each student's ability comes from those who sign up for discussion
lists or blogs that the students create, from the clients who received
web sites designed by students for a final assignment, from the
MOOs students enter for the first time, or from class members who
struggled with course readings, blogging, or similar tasks.
I do not wish to overly romanticize the writing that occurs in
Room 25. Michael Joyce wrote that electronic texts are "belief
structures" (2001, p. 17) in that people are "apt to believe that
even the most awkward contemporary technology of literacy em-
bodies the associational schema of the texts that it presents"
(2001, p. 18). Teaching in computer-enhanced writing courses
echoes Joyce's thoughts on belief structures. Sometimes instruc-
tors are quick to believe that even the most inelegant or common-
place student e-text embodies the associational schema of the
other texts it presents. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of
student-produced electronic texts that succeed (but probably
should not) because of the belief structures coupled with what ex-
ists on screen. Many of my students have produced these e-texts,
and probably most veteran writing instructors can name a
half-dozen or so student e-texts that succeeded because of a pre-
sumed belief that the work carried far more associational schema
than it truly did. This is why deep assessment is needed in the com-
puter-enhanced writing class. Writing instructors need to meld
hot and cool technologies to challenge our belief structures about
students' e-texts, just as we push our students to confront their
own belief structures as they create these texts.
The convergence of hot and cool technologies in Room 25 has led
me to want to construct desire paths for computer-enhanced writing
assessment. When I wrote my dissertation, I spent long hours study-
ing contemporary architecture to understand the connections archi-
tectural processes have to writing (Penrod, 1994). What fascinated
me was how users of an architectural space frequently create pre-
ferred paths that do not always follow the prescribed pavement. De-
sire paths lead us toward reaching our goals or direction on our own
terms. As we set that path, we look carefully at and for obstacles as