Page 24 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of the New Media on Writing Assessment

INTRODUCTION xxi

lege. Unlike some of the other ideas offered later in this book, OS PI
and LiveText simply import print-based criteria for rubrics to create
a relational database or repository for student work. These options
offer coherence in that the standards reflect a print-based under-
standing of what good writing is. Assessment then continues as it
always has, except the material is uploaded into a program for
safekeeping. This approach is fine if instructors continue having
students write typical papers that are transformed into pixel and
uploaded onto a site. However, such writing undervalues the in-
credible shift in literacy that the computer generated and how texts
have responded. If instructors adopt portfolio programs like OSPI
and LiveText, coherence does exist, but it is a surface coherence that
may not necessarily fit together when reviewers closely examine
the students' electronic texts.
At first glance, the dependence of one technological system on
the other does seem quite remote, and the possibilities for coherence
seem equally as remote, especially to the staunchest of practitio-
ners in either the networked writing or assessment camp. To a great
degree, networked writing and writing assessment do look like
strange companions. Assessment talk often sounds retrograde, a
reflection of an earlier era in writing instruction that prided itself
on searching for an ideal text against which student writing was
measured. Conversely, online writing instruction seems cut-
ting-edge, a progressive examination of where Composition can
travel if institutions have the faculty, the inclination, and the finan-
cial support to sustain the journey. The current situation in Com-
position reflects Guenther Kress' point that conventionality and
change are often at odds (1995). Computers and writing assess-
ment are at two ends of Composition's spectrum; each tells the tale
of contemporary writing instruction—a cultural history rich in
myths, memes, assumptions, promises, and speculations concern-
ing what instructors can do with the available technologies and the
transformations and results these technologies have on students'
writing. Over the years, more than a few of these proposed ideas
have bordered—if not crossed into—technomyopia, a condition fu-
turist Paul Saffo (1992) described as the overestimation of the
short-term potential of a new technology, and other ideas have
been disproved of their value because of changing social, political,
and economic conditions that affect writing instruction and evalu-
ation and the widespread use of computers in teaching writing.