Page 93 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of the New Media on Writing Assessment

60 CHAPTER 2

World Wide Web is, well, worldwide—who can account for all the
cultural and educational expectations and beliefs a global reader-
ship has? Certainly only a very few spectacular writers of the last
millennium have had this ability. The purpose of an e-text can be so
many things depending on who accesses the text and when the ac-
cessing occurs. At best, the student writer can perhaps identify the
primary and secondary audiences her web site or postings may ad-
dress; in some instances, a student writer may be able to provide a
tertiary audience for the work. Perhaps as students' access to and
ability with e-texts grow in the years ahead, we can expect and de-
mand more from them with regard to outlining a global audience.
For now, unless the writing is produced in a limited environment,
like a closed BBS (Bulletin Board System) or restricted listserv, ex-
pecting students to have a complete grasp of the discourse struc-
ture needed to produce a successful web site, weblog, or MOO may
be difficult. This is because online class assignments really cease to
be "class assignments" once students leave the course or post them
to the web. In cyberspace, these earlier assignments become an arti-
fact, a bit of information webbed with other bits, a declaration of
some knowledge put forward by a writer who has moved on.
All this suggests that in networked space, student writers are
not apprentices: They are writers and authors. Equally, in net-
worked space, instructors are not masters: They too are writers
and authors. Thus, from a networked space a community of writ-
ers emerges. In such a community, how one shares authority and
power as well as how one discusses her progress reflects the levels
of ownership one believes she has. Currently, in many composi-
tion classes—even the computer-based classes—an imbalance ex-
ists in how authority, power, and ownership are configured in
assessment. This is so even with the more egalitarian e-portfolio.
Although students submit their best work, often with some type
of reflective element to the portfolio, the true evaluation comes
from the instructor and not some external audience that responds
to the students' texts.
As technical convergence transforms the present state of the text
in Composition, it must also lead to transforming assessment as
well. In the future, authentic assessment in classes that use net-
worked writing may require writing instructors to relinquish some
of their control, their power over the text, to others who are outside
the classroom and who wish to comment and critique the student