Page 60 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of the New Media on Writing Assessment

INTERNETWORKED WRITING 27

writing specialists need to reconsider electronic writing assessment
in terms of aesthetic criticism. The merging of the visual and the ver-
bal in an e-text demands that instructors contemplate both the rhe-
torical effect beyond the written word and the volume of knowledge
a writer must possess to create functioning MOOs, web sites, multi-
media presentations, hypertexts, and so on. Consequently, the stan-
dardized, oversimplified understanding of writing assessment
outlined by Leslie and Jett-Simpson (1997) earlier in this chapter
should not apply to online writing assignments. Something else,
some other criteria, must be developed to account for writing done in
networked environments. This "something else" will be taken up in
detail in the following chapters.
"Video killed the radio star," so the Buggies' 1980 song goes, but
the trends in technological convergence depend too heavily on the
written word for Composition and its practitioners to vanish. For
computers not to kill the composition teacher, it is increasingly more
important for writing instructors to be well trained technologically
and assessment-savvy—ready to teach in whatever configurations
future composition classrooms take. Convergence can become a way
for Composition and its specialists to speak authoritatively about
writing in a digital age and to move out of the literal and figurative
academic basement it has dwelled in for more than a century. How-
ever, before Composition asserts its voice in local or large-scale set-
tings, there need to be some mechanisms in place to assess writing
that arises from internetworked classes. As most university faculties
realize, the state legislatures that govern higher education now ex-
pect outcomes assessment for most courses, but particularly so for
anything connected to student literacy. In fact, the 2004 State of the
Union speech hinted that the No Child Left Behind Act would be ex-
tended to grades 13 through 20, and many states' legislatures sug-
gest that it is time for public colleges to be held accountable for
student learning, as is the recent State University of New York Re-
gents' decision to have testing models in place to gauge student
learning in writing. Having electronically scored 20-minute essays is
not equivalent to the more complex and demanding nature of
internetworked writing, which is becoming the foundation for the
type of writing many students face in their future professions.
Although electronic portfolios are a start toward college instruc-
tors documenting student growth and accountability in writing, as