Page 196 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of the New Media on Writing Assessment

REMEDIATING WRITING ASSESSMENT 163

Yet, as we have learned from the varied practices of online writing
communities, print-based standards are not necessarily the only
standards that exist for composing a text.
To acknowledge the critics' concerns, computer technology does
create a litany of questions for the current standards used in writing
assessment. This, I think, is a positive move.
The field should regularly interrogate and challenge the standards
used in writing assessment, perhaps even more so when technologi-
cal changes affect the production of written texts. Clearly the com-
puter has altered our writing habits and practices, and, at the
moment, these activities are too new and too dynamic to establish
ingrained representations of acceptable writing in networked envi-
ronments. However, this flux should not prevent instructors from
tracing these new habituated practices that shape written discourse
in internetworked spaces. If anything, writing faculty need to be
comparing and contrasting the types of texts and language produced
for these various settings, because students need to have a linguistic
awareness to write well in any format. While the claims of heteroge-
neity in language use and habituated practices exist in the literature
on computers and writing, until teachers examine these changes,
these assertions seem little more than lore. Without greater study,
the call for heterogeneity in writing practices can be dismissed as a
dodge against teaching "the basics." None of us are abdicating our
responsibility to teach the fundamentals of writing — we're just in
the process of determining what the basics are in this new techno-
logically driven environment.
Most writing teachers realize that the homogenous understand-
ing of writing standards that a few of our colleagues, some pundits,
and the dentist, physician, butcher, and gas attendant have from
their past experiences has morphed into something different. These
differences should compel instructors to ask questions about the via-
bility of standards for writing instruction. Although the use of com-
puters contributes to these changes, the mere act of writing online is
not the sole reason for the evolution of standards in writing assess-
ment. We also must consider a more diverse student population,
considerable governmental cutbacks in funding K-20 education, the
increased public discussion of school accountability, and other re-
gional factors in the talk of writing standards in addition to the rise
of students' computer usage. We should also be wary of what I'll call
"standards backlash" — the proposal that writing assessment needs