Page 191 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of the New Media on Writing Assessment

158 CHAPTER 7

mounts for both teachers and students when writing assessment cri-
teria are incompatible with the texts produced. This frustration can
be compounded when complex e-texts are involved.
Not having clear evaluation models for e-texts makes assessment
risky in that accountability is compromised, and the instructors' re-
views become open to claims of subjectivity. Writing instruction fre-
quently faces such claims, regardless of the medium in which the
content is presented. However, because visual rhetoric and design are
now included in the production of an e-text, a student's or a col-
league's charge of disliking a particular piece based on visual appear-
ance may be enough to make instructors second-guess their decisions.
When the criteria for evaluation are weak, instructors expose them-
selves to negative commentary.
Worse yet is for writing teachers to ignore the call to establish
some form of criteria for students' e-texts. Not having any guide-
lines in place at all implies that e-textual writing has no value in the
writing classroom, for as White's saying goes, "We assess what we
value in writing."
This is why it is important to for instructors to focus on what stu-
dent proficiencies are valued in e-textual writing and how those
competencies can be met through more sophisticated writing assess-
ment models that embed continuous evaluation throughout the
writing process. Because remediated writing assessment will have
the ability to create voluminous learning traces, (e.g., the audit trails
described in chapter 4), opportunities for summative and formative
electronic writing assessment experiences exist.
Compositionists must discover what they value in an electronic
text so the evaluation process becomes more refined than it cur-
rently is for many programs. If writing instructors do not discover
ways to evaluate e-texts, evaluation models will be imposed on
them. As many veteran teachers can attest, the old patterns of pow-
erful vested interests connected to writing assessment do fight back,
hence the rise of software programs, such as E-rater and the Intelli-
gent Essay Assessor among others, that focus on electronic forms of
normative holistic scoring driven by a preprogrammed algorithm.
In these situations, it is not how the students fare on the writing test
that matters; it is how quickly and efficiently the students' work can
be processed that matters. Cost and time management of an assess-
ment tool should not be the leading variables that drive how faculty
measure student writing progress.