Page 177 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of the New Media on Writing Assessment

144 CHAPTER 6

see the dark side of convergence and to realize that the humanities
have a very important role to play in developing students' reading
and writing ability in this new era.
In Engell and Dangerfield's market-model university structure
(1998), technology literacy becomes reduced to sets of discrete skills,
easily testable and tested throughout the students' academic career.
In this framework, writing is also condensed to sets of discrete sills
that can be tested and retested quite easily. In both instances, the crit-
ical aspects and nuances related to a student forming full literacy are
absent. Instead, the focus is on efficiency and accountability in
transmitting information. In this model, Composition could easily
return to the bad old days of indirect assessment, as the market-
model university format puts in place mechanisms to chop away at
general education loss leaders like writing classes. Market demand
drives what courses are offered, what majors are cut, and what ones
are funded (Engell & Dangerfield, 1998). Because composition is a re-
quired general education course, often referred to as a "service"
course, the demand for composition classes comes from the institu-
tion requiring them, and not necessarily from the current student
interest in the course content. Many times, students do not appreci-
ate the importance or value in their first-year composition sequence
until later in their studies or after graduation (Light, 1999). Conse-
quently, it becomes critical for writing specialists and program ad-
ministrators to examine their programs and promote those values,
benefits, and advantages that the writing sequence has at their insti-
tutions. In this discussion, it is vitally important for writing pro-
grams to "pay attention" (Selfe, 1999, p. xix) to the place electronic
writing has in first-year composition, because this could be the next
wave of "service learning" in colleges and universities.
In the market-model university, access is something more than
students being offered opportunities to learn with computer-en-
hanced writing classes, as Selfe outlined (1999); access has to include
what has been traditionally considered part of the American univer-
sity's mission: to reason, read, and write critically. The point to ac-
cess in the age of technological convergence is not to privilege one
side over another in students' learning experiences; the point is to in-
tegrate all sides of reasoning, reading, and writing in a text.
To create the type of environment Selfe (1999) spoke of, where
students have greater direct access to technology in the writing
classroom before compositionists assess their work, requires a mas-