Page 94 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of the New Media on Writing Assessment

TRANSFORMING TEXTS 61

writers' efforts. Encouraging outsiders to read, review, and com-
ment on class hypertexts, MOOs, blogs, web pages, and so on makes
evaluation more real, more legitimate, for writers. This approach
treats student writers as the authors they are. Students then must
own their words and the content of their pages, blogs, and the like, as
all writers must do at some point.
However, with electronic communication, a student's words have
a greater potential for impact than if the words were placed in a
papertext assignment or portfolio. The external critiques, then,
demonstrate how well a student has captured the concept of situa-
tional literacy. These outside responses also show to what extent a
student has honed her multiple literacies as a technorhetor.
To help readers who are unfamiliar with how an external evalua-
tion might benefit students in networked classes, let me draw on a
familiar situation in the traditional classroom format. If, for in-
stance, a student fails to communicate her point about the physical
effects of natural-based steroids to an interested web surfer who
happened to log on to her page for more information, is what tran-
spired more serious than scoring a 2 or a 3 on an end-of-term holis-
tic essay? Some instructors might argue that the student who has
miscommunicated information through her web page has commit-
ted a more egregious error than scoring poorly on a one-shot essay.
The incorrect or obtuse data the surfer may obtain during his visit
could cause physical harm or great confusion; remember, for some
people, a .edu site suggests that all the information is carefully
vetted—even though the link may be clearly labeled as containing
classroom research. That is why visitors who log onto students'
web pages or other e-texts should be asked to evaluate the work for
content and readability (perhaps even navigablity and usability as
students become more facile with technology). Visitors always
have the option of not doing an evaluation; however, a number of
them will respond, and students then receive genuine evaluative
feedback on their writing from someone who has no connection to
the outcome of the class but who has a strong interest in the topic.
Students can then measure these responses in relation to the in-
structor's or their peers' comments.
Rather than risk the flames of passing along erroneous or embar-
rassing information to the world, most students will revise ill-con-
ceived or poorly constructed passages if someone in cyberspace
points them out. Over time and with comments flowing from the