Page 171 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of the New Media on Writing Assessment

138 CHAPTER 5

dents. Student evaluation works when it is immediate, when it is di-
rected at the work, and when students have a chance to revise to
make their work stronger. This rediscovery helped me to center my
efforts to meet those aims.
Teaching in Room 25 showed me that inclusive, effective assess-
ment requires instructors to take risks with their authority, with
their time, and with their students. Effective assessment in electronic
environments also asks instructors to undertake new courses of ac-
tion to respond to networked writing and the corresponding e-texts
that come out of the course work. My grading hand rests even more
easily on the mouse pad now; I am not so quick to overwrite or over-
ride students' ideas as I was a few years ago. Although I still inter-
vene sometimes when a student asks for specific technical advice, my
approach to teaching writing now comes through questioning and
observing patterns that relate to the interaction between a student's
visual and verbal rhetoric rather than through overt correction and
rewriting of documents. And, even better, my grading hand does not
want to overwrite web sites or other hypertext documents. These
days, my comments are sent by e-mail directly to the student, or if
we are in class, I am sitting next to the student discussing her work
and she manipulates the mouse to make the changes she wants.
Relearning assessment from my experiences in Room 25 has made
me more aware of what some students undergo in the evaluation
process. The heat generated by traditional writing assessment prac-
tices is sometimes more than what these students can stand. For
some students, the heat is so intense, it shuts down their ability to
write anything, anywhere, at any time, and in any medium. The
computer's coolness takes some of the heat away for certain stu-
dents. In the process of ludic writing, the act of composing becomes
play and it makes writing less stressful in short bursts.
Still, it is not always easy to show people how melding these two
technologies can be an exciting pedagogical opportunity. The pros-
pects seem particularly small when there are limitations or inconve-
niences attached to the technologies (e.g., system problems,
software glitches, the lack of an established or normed evaluation
rubric, etc.) or when a group is wedded to a particular communica-
tion domain, such as print documentation. Layer these moments
with striving to find compatible assessment procedures to mesh
with networked writing beyond the superficial models offered by