Page 203 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of the New Media on Writing Assessment

170 CHAPTER 7

assessment is an attainable goal. The foundations are in place. Now
moving forward demands all instructors and program administra-
tors to reconceptualize the substance and the business of converg-
ing two seemingly disparate technologies into the existing values of
their campuses.
This book is not meant to state what writing teachers can and
cannot do with writing assessment and computers in their class-
rooms. Because infrastructures, budgets, and missions vary
greatly across institutions, any prescriptions would be ill-fitting
solutions to the problem. Rather, the issues raised throughout this
work have been set forth to generate larger discussions about how
instructors and their programs move forward to balance the
weight of two equally demanding technologies in their teaching.
The conversations put forward in this book have been designed to
motivate writing teachers to articulate what they value in e-texts,
writing assessment, and internetworked writing experiences to
find the answers to the problems that exist in their home institu-
tions. This suggests that syncretism seems to be the most workable
method to point writing teachers in the directions that they and the
field need to head.
Syncretic thinking about technological convergence in Composi-
tion indicates that we won't necessarily scrap older ideas in favor of
newer ones. Syncretic thinking also implies that there are ways to
blend seemingly disparate traditions and habitual practices. There
is no doubt that syncretic thinking about the convergence of com-
puters and writing assessment will continually challenge us to re-
visit and rearticulate what we value about each technology and
what we value when the two technologies are blended into our ped-
agogy. The hope is that compositionists discover what mix of the
old and new technologies works best for their programs before ex-
ternal pressures force a remediated writing assessment plan that
fits no one's interests.