Page 193 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of the New Media on Writing Assessment

160 CHAPTER 7

on their writing assignments; for them, evaluation is not something
that can be driven by speed or efficiency. For now, the oppositional
voice of compositionists has given many institutions pause before
implementing computerized essay scoring software. However, if the
field does not begin to consider alternative models for evaluating
electronically produced writing, future resistance may be futile be-
cause the merging of computers and writing assessment will be
co-opted by industries like ETS, Vantage, SCT, and others that can
promise results at a fraction of the cost for maintaining faculty.
What makes the synergy between computer and assessment tech-
nologies so unusual compared with other forms of convergence is
that there is a significant political and economic pull for both tech-
nologies in the rooms where decisions are made, and this tug of war
slows down the remediation process. Although it appears that ad-
ministrators and legislators agree that there need to be more tech-
nology and more accountability in teaching writing, there certainly
is little agreement about implementation, costs to maintain, and
success in measuring what students learned. All this impedes rapid
technological convergence. One benefit of delayed progress is it of-
fers time for solid Composition research to be conducted that can in-
troduce new models for evaluating writing given the rise of
computer technology.
My hope is that computerized writing assessment will evolve be-
yond the holistic model to better conform to teaching with technol-
ogies. That is the reason I wrote this book. We are seeing the
beginning of this change in the continued call for greater e-portfo-
lio use and in the creation of the Online Learning Record, TOPIC/
ICON, and Dynamic Criteria Mapping. This is not to suggest that
writing assessment will fade away, because it most likely will not
without a major sea change in the legislative and administrative
perspectives on accountability in the schools. Instead, teachers will
lead the way for technological convergence by integrating best
practices from each technology into a hybrid of something new.
Therefore, Composition as a discipline must turn its thoughts to-
ward deciding what assessment strategies work best for com-
puter-based writing classrooms, because the decisions can mean
the difference between faculty members constructing an assess-
ment system that promotes powerful learning in networked envi-
ronments or receiving more of the same, ill-suited conventional
evaluation strategies ported over from present patterns of writing