Page 58 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of the New Media on Writing Assessment

INTERNETWORKED WRITING 25

the possibility of wresting control from the student writer so much
easier for the teacher, as Forbes' article (1996) illustrates, composi-
tion practitioners may need to return to thinking about writing as
an art and assessing writing much like one does a painting or a
sculpture. This, particularly, may be an effective way of discussing
networked texts—especially for those e-texts that incorporate mul-
timedia or polyvocality that cut against the grain of academic or
professional norms. Instead of measuring optimal competence in a
given setting (as is the case with holistic evaluation) or longitudi-
nally for a series of genres (portfolio or webfolio use), electronic texts
could be considered and evaluated in terms of their communicative
context. That is, how does the message express a point clearly and in-
terestingly to an audience, and how does the writer use the tools and
techniques available to him or her in various combinations to relate
that message to the audience? In this assessment model, evaluators
examine the writing in context to see how it functions aesthetically,
argumentatively, conceptually, and performatively as well as struc-
turally for that community. What communicative assessment asks
of instructors is to reorient the process of evaluating students'
writing from being success-oriented (i.e., grade or score-driven)
toward developing an understanding of how e-texts function in
various contexts.
A very real possibility for changing the focus in online writing as-
sessment to acknowledge public, communicative criteria is that stu-
dents' divergent thinking and problem-solving abilities can be
rewarded instead of ignored or undervalued, as they so often are
now in traditional assessment methods. Currently, if Michael Wil-
liamson's (Huot & Williamson, 1993) observation still holds true,
writing specialists do not have any way of assessing written dis-
course that exceeds the fixed boundaries of academic writing. Wil-
liamson (Huot & Williamson, 1993) noted that a major deficit of
either indirect or direct writing assessment models is that creative,
divergent thinking is not encouraged; rather, conforming to an aca-
demic norm is stressed. Following Williamson's line of thought,
then, the implication of a communicative form of writing assess-
ment means compositionists must recognize that a linguistic com-
munity is not identical for all participants and that different
communities depend on different interpretive systems. This is an im-
portant point for evaluating electronic communication, because in-
dividuals frequently maintain various levels of investment and