Page 180 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of the New Media on Writing Assessment

ACCESS BEFORE ASSESSMENT 147

needs and interests connected to its student population and various
limits on its ability to use technology, the sharing of ideas related to
these e-textual topics is important. Wider discussions like these help
newcomers or skeptics better understand how the technologies inter-
act in the classroom and show them that a universalized computers
and writing assessment program appears impossible to carry out.
Faculty who have knowledge of both technologies are necessary
to begin the discussions and to guide their institutions and programs
to find those options that work best for them, and not what was just
announced in the media that is happening at a large research univer-
sity, an Ivy, or a small liberal arts college. Writing specialists can
carve out a new language to discuss these intersecting technologies,
one that melds terms from computer-enhanced composition prac-
tices and from writing assessment in particular ways that speak
about how to best evaluate students' growth when they are engag-
ing in internetworked writing. At most institutions, compositionists
can and should take the lead in offering best practices in converging
these two technologies.
Perhaps, though, these individuals' greatest benefit to their pro-
grams and to Composition is that they can articulate the different
social and cultural values that dwell within both technologies and
how student learning is affected. Compositionists who understand
both computers and writing assessment can help negotiate how stu-
dents can be creative when their learning outcomes are increasingly
being driven by narrowing local, state, and national standards.

HOW SHOULD ACCESS BE INCREASED BEFORE WE ASSESS?

Writing specialists need to consider two elements to the notion of ac-
cess—a way for students and instructors to approach or enter these
technologies as well as the right or opportunity for students and in-
structors to use these technologies. Far too often, Composition's cul-
ture focuses on the latter view and forgets the former. Unless both
aspects of the discussion are taken into account simultaneously, the
entire concept of access is meaningless. For the two technologies to
work in tandem in the composition classroom, there needs to be an
equal and mutual understanding of how students and instructors
can move toward using these technologies. Then it seems the oppor-
tunities can emerge for both instructors and students to use the tech-
nologies in meaningful, beneficial ways in the writing classroom.