Page 183 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of the New Media on Writing Assessment

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ideas for using both computers and assessment in the writing class.
Most K-12 instructors draw their knowledge from different bases,
such as education or tests and measurements. Their positions can
help us see problems and challenges for technorhetoric in a different
light, because college writing instructors can observe how future
students progress with these technologies long before the students
arrive on campus. Writing specialists can begin to understand the
K-12 teachers' institutional demands placed on them by others re-
garding the use of rigid rubrics, skill-based instruction, and basic
computer usage (i.e., word processing or PowerPoint). In turn,
compositionists can offer classroom ideas that arise out of
postprocess theory, "rearticulated" writing assessment (Huot,
2002), or visual rhetoric to stimulate and evaluate K-12 online writ-
ing activities. In addition, colleges could offer summer camps for
young writers that focus on technology. In this setting, students'
work is evaluated using new models of deep assessment. Similarly,
campus writing programs can set up outreach services to local
school districts in either a summer camp or semester-long workshop
format to encourage K-12 instructors to adopt new technologies in
their classes. Through these small steps, compositionists would be
ensuring that their future students are better prepared
technologically to meet the expectations of networked writing in the
college classroom.
Access is so much more than stating that every student should
have the ability to use computers or to be assessed fairly. These
two items should be a given in Composition. A revised under-
standing of access depends on the field's awareness that to safe-
guard access to both technologies, many more options need to be
made available to instructors and students. Although these four
suggestions are only tiny steps in what can be done by
compositionists to bring about technological access in the disci-
pline, the ideas are concrete and workable for most programs or
departments. If writing specialists are to become the agents of
change Selfe (1999) argued for, then these four propositions move
the field in the direction she hopes we take. Without better techno-
logical access for either computers or writing assessment, it is nei-
ther fair nor advantageous to assess student writing created in
networked environments.
The growing need to protect and extend fair access to both tech-
nologies in Composition is a reaction to the darker side of the mar-