Page 56 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of the New Media on Writing Assessment

INTERNETWORKED WRITING 23

Perhaps no area in writing assessment will be affected more by
technological convergence than discourse knowledge. The standard
expository modes of discourse explode under the weight of multi-
media and polyvocality that exist in computer-assisted writing in-
struction. Although stories about human experiences, polemics,
fantasies, poems, advertising, and talk remain in networked envi-
ronments, the messages look much different compared with their
papertext counterparts. In computer-mediated communication
and converged space, these genres blur as writers combine forms to
create new hybrid genres to communicate with their audiences.
Improvisation and innovation instead of prescribed textbook limi-
tations spur the rhetorical choices a writer makes in electronically
produced writing.
Furthermore, writing assessment usually depends on students
matching—or trying to match—specific conventions in their writ-
ing that are defined by a program's writing faculty or a college or
university as being critical to certify one's literacy. The more profi-
ciently students can match their writing to the desired conventions,
the better the score they receive on the exit portfolio or barrier essay.
The more (or less, depending on the result) a student can model a
particular style of writing, the easier it is to certify the student as
part of a literate college or university population. If Composition is
to move further into computer-based writing instruction, this dis-
course game must change. Rhetorical and linguistic improvisation
or innovation—so desirable in networked writing—resists standard-
ization, which puts students highly involved in computer-based
writing classes at some risk for strong performance in the usual bat-
tery of writing assessment tests that measure traditional generic
structures or usage. Cheryl Forbes pointed to this dilemma in her
1996 Computers and Composition article on overriding and overwrit-
ing student work. Even when teachers use what Composition con-
siders to be a more humane, more performative assessment tool, the
portfolio, Forbes (1996) addressed the potential for writing teachers
to overwrite students' decisions in electronic compositions by insert-
ing lengthy teacher comments, by using bold or heavy text fonts in
strong colors to emphasize teacher comments to students, or by
interrupting or even adding sentences to the students' work.
Equally restrictive is the present batch of holistic essay-grading
software designed to take the "subjectivity" out of teacher essay
evaluation. If such programs eventually were to be extended to net-