Page 83 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of the New Media on Writing Assessment

50 CHAPTER 2

construction theory" (in Selfe & Hilligoss, 1994, p. 196). Conse-
quently, the change is a problem for current notions of writing as-
sessment—including portfolio assessment—because what grounds
much of assessment theory is drawn from either what Brian Huot
called "a Platonic universe and positivist epistemology ... an ideal-
ized universal truth that assumes a single correct answer " or "an as-
sumption that professional editors or teachers are qualified to make
[assessment] decisions based upon their experience and expertise"
(1998, p. 103, brackets mine). If writing teachers follow the Platonic
ideal, and a good number still do, then much of networked writing
must certainly appear incoherent.
Likewise, if compositionists evaluate e-texts based on a situation
and appraise each student's e-text without some criteria, along the
lines of Jean-Fran ois Lyotard's concept of judging without crite-
ria, then assessment drifts into a subjective space that can be hard
for some instructors to defend. After all, in postmodernism as in
Internet discourse, who can claim that one's experience or expertise
is more valid and valued than another's? To suggest in networked
writing that the teacher's experiences or expertise is more validated
than the student writers' is slippery, because many students now
come to technology-infused composition classes with far more ex-
pertise and experience in computer literacy than a number of their
instructors.
What may even be worse for assessment in this circumstance is
that writing instructors enter computer-based writing classrooms
without much expertise in the various language and graphics tools
used to construct e-texts. They may also have little background in
postmodern theories of texts and language that address fragmen-
tary syntax and discourse. There may also be a lack of understand-
ing of the postprocess approach to composition, in which writing is
situated for public view beyond the classroom. Yet these writing
teachers are expected to evaluate writing that is highly associative
and connective rather than linear, writing that is often without clo-
sure when compared with the more familiar papertexts that re-
spond nicely to modernist evaluation techniques. This problem
creates an even wider gap in teacher-generated evaluation of
e-texts, because greater numbers of students now move about
comfortably in networked environments because their earlier
schooling or home experiences are increasingly linked to comput-
ers. In the very near future, a significant amount of students may