Page 45 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of the New Media on Writing Assessment

12 CHAPTER 1

work? Numeric grades and letter equivalents seem inadequate to ad-
dress the attentiveness, observations, and connections students make
in their online discussions. Equally insufficient is the offering of
"checks and minuses" for their participation, because the richness of
the exchanges often points out the inadequacy of what a check or mi-
nus can tell us about a student's work. Moreover, grading solely on
the surface mechanics of student postings seems thoroughly bogus to
me because students are communicating with each other at a deeper
level. In so many instances, students are correctly using the rhetorical
concepts or techniques presented in class; it is just that their minds
and fingers are moving so quickly that error occurs. We know from
earlier composition research that when a student's mind is engaged at
deeper levels or he or she is struggling with ideas, the writer's gram-
mar suffers until the thoughts are sufficiently worked through.
Still, not assigning some type of value to students' online work is
also inadequate, especially if I find myself teaching a class where all
assignments are connected to internetworked activities. My ambiv-
alence toward being responsive to my students' emergent ability as
technorhetors and being responsible to my institution's demands
on me as a professor mirrors Michael Day's "grading hand" obser-
vation (2000). Sometimes instructors' comments and grades inter-
fere too regularly in the students' writing process, much to the
detriment of the students' progress. Yet some type of evaluation
needs to be in place to show accountability to my department, col-
lege, and university administration. Writing teachers in networked
environments constantly need to be attentive to how much inter-
vention is needed — if any at all — to evaluate the written work pro-
duced on a discussion list, a web site, a MOO, and so on. Day may be
correct when he says faculty members might be better to leave
e-mail exchanges ungraded, much like the way journals and jour-
nal writing functioned in earlier years (2000, p. 161). But what
does that suggest for the other forms of networked writing stu-
dents do in their classes?
Although Day's approach for leaving e-mail ungraded works for
now, I wonder whether it will still be a viable option in forthcoming
years, especially as students come to college more computer-savvy
and fluent in writing for online audiences. These students will expect
some type of grading on discussion list work because they have been
steeped in an educational and a political system that demands writ-
ing be assessed, and the check and minus system may not carry suf-