Page 46 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of the New Media on Writing Assessment

INTERNETWORKED WRITING 13

ficient value in the future. As for assessing web pages, MOO work,
hypertext, and so on, compositionists have not truly addressed this
issue in great depth other than to consider electronic portfolios. As-
sessment in these areas is still nascent, and greater thought needs to
be given to how composition faculties are to evaluate this new form
of writing. Rubrics alone will not be enough to handle the complexi-
ties and the variables that arise when one writes in electronic genres.
For the last 5 years, I have thought about the problems of assess-
ing computer-generated writing assignments. Shirley Brice Heath's
essay, "The Fourth Vision: Literate Language at Work," keeps com-
ing to my mind as a way to outline broadly the type of iden-
tity-building and literacy experiences students have when writing in
networked spaces and how instructors might evaluate those experi-
ences. Heath's remarks offer the best defense for writing teachers to
argue against using their grading hand too early in the development
of their students' electronic writing experiences. For Heath,

Being literate means being able to talk with and listen with others to
interpret texts, say what they mean, link them to personal experi-
ence with other texts, argue with them and make predictions from
them, develop future scenarios, compare and evaluate related situ-
ations, and know that practice of all these literate abilities is practi-
cal. (1990, p. 298)

Reflecting on my own experiences with students first coming to
internetworked writing, I could see firsthand what Heath described
about literate language, but it appears that there is no way, no lan-
guage outside of the grading hand, to assess students' writing when
it resists conforming to the traditional models. Technology-en-
hanced writing assignments undermine the instructor 's power to le-
gitimate a student's work because of the communicative freedom
that discussion lists, web sites, MOOs, hypertexts, and others offer.
Student writers no longer see their writing solely from a professor's
viewpoint. Instead, 20, 30, or more people beyond the teacher read
and respond to what the student has written. Students learn to look
at their writing through the eyes of a larger, more diverse reading
audience rather than through a single holistic number, essay grade,
or letter grade given by an instructor. This is a great achievement for
the writing classroom, because it emphasizes all the ideas process
writing purports. Maybe the reactions of dozens or hundreds of
readers are more reliable and valid approaches to writing assessment