On this page you will find short discussions of traditional evaluation criteria and how they might be applied to non-traditional student work.Applying Traditional Methods of Evaluation to Online Writing Projects
As much as we try to de-emphasize the “product” in current pedagogy, the fact remains that having students produce web pages creates a very public product that will be judged by others. Not only will those people surfing around the web come upon these pages, but also our colleagues and administrators can gain easy access to our students’ work. Therefore, when working in public non-traditional media, we also need to make some decisions about how to assess student progress and product in some traditional ways because we know that others will be doing just that. Generally, traditional criteria include:
Literacy and Textuality / Perception of Audience and Purpose / Organization / Content and Development / Style and Tone
Redefining
Literacy and TextualityIn a paper presented at the 1997 CCCC Conference, Kristine L. Blair addresses the need for teachers to revise their understanding of "literacy" itself. She says:
Although scholars (Self 1990; Lanham 1993) assert that computer-mediated communication has the potential to broaden notions of authorship, readership, interpretation, and hierarchy, very often our training to respond to student writing and our subsequent evaluation practices--with an emphasis on an individually produced hardcopy essay and its predominantly linear features--may actually limit the acquisition of multiple and hypertextual literacies required for our students' academic and professional success in the twenty-first century. (3)Drawing on the work of Cynthia Self and others who recognize the potential for deconstructing the traditional teacher-student hierarchy in collaborative computer writing classrooms, Blair reminds us that
computers can become tools of [student] empowerment only if teachers are trained to employ more dialogic pedagogy and assessment practices. [. . . ] Part of any democratization effort must consider the ways in which both process and product change in electronic writing environments as [. . . ] technological advancements foster a re-definition of textuality that includes visual and virtual media as well as dialogue among peers and between cultures. From a postmodern standpoint, such features constitute a version of intertextuality far removed from often traditional notions of textuality that posit the product to be a written, individual, or even printed effort.Blair claims that members of English departments are perhaps the "most resistant" to what Lanham (1993) has termed the "digital revolution" because they are often "divided between what does and what does not constitute a text" (14).
For that reason, she says that
just as it is important to teach students the way in which rhetorical and literary texts are produced, distributed, and consumed, it is equally important for teachers of writing as members of English departments to recognize that the essay is a printed form that admittedly for our students has little use outside of the academy. Yet subverting the stronghold print literacy has in most English departments today does not necessitate the subversion of the standards of 'good writing'. (14)She adds:
Although students and their teachers need to learn to view non-linear, multimedia, hypertextual communications as "writing," the extent to which these attitudes can change will necessitate not only a redefinition of textuality but also a redefinition of teaching and assessment. As we become increasingly aware of this change, we must recognize that the teaching of writing must also be technological training, an awareness of varying reading and writing processes in a time when the images, sounds, and words of multimedia environments all impact meaning and interpretation, and where these modes of communication are not merely supplemental to traditional hardcopy models of textuality. (15)Works Cited Blair, Kristine L. "Technology, Teacher Training, and Postmodern Literacies." Paper presented at CCCC Conference Phoenix, AZ,
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Student Perception of Audience and Purpose
According to Thomas T. Barker and Fred O. Kemp, in traditional writing classrooms teachers are presumed to be the only real audience for and final judge of student writing. Students learn how to improve their writing through their interpretation of “the fourfold feedback: grades, editing symbols, margin comments, and writing conferences with the instructor” (6). And because students never seriously consider themselves authentic readers and evaluators of their own or others’ writing in this situation, they never “learn to revise in accordance with . . . [their] own interpretation of the text, but always in accordance with . . . [their] interpretation of the instructor’s interpretation of the text” (6). Therefore, they learn that the purpose of writing is not so much to be read as to be evaluated. They come to believe that the effectiveness of any text “lies not in the power of persuasion and description, but in its ability to trigger highly conventionalized responses from professional graders” (6). This type of writing pedagogy prevents students from developing a sense of themselves as authors who have control or “ownership” of their work, or a sense that their work has power beyond that of pleasing the instructor and earning a grade.
In contrast, the audience for student writing in theVirtual Team Teaching project includes not only the instructors, but also other members of the students’ groups and the readers who will view the finished pages on the Internet. And while some of the more formal writing assignments in the project, such as the web page proposal, are evaluated according to traditional writing conventions, writing done for other purposes is not. For example, writing done through email and chatrooms for the purpose of clearly communicating ideas and instructions to other members of a student’s group is evaluated only to determine how well it accomplished those purposes. In an anonymous survey students completed toward the end of the project, responses to the question “What did you learn about writing from this project?” included: “How to write about things that apply to people everyday,” “How to put words into phrases that people will understand,” and “How to define specific jobs.” Such responses make it clear that students perceived their audience to include readers other than their instructors, and that they were writing for purposes other than earning a grade. Throughout the project, the instructors emphasized the need for students to consider their Internet audience, and one student commented on the survey that “We had to focus on our audience and make [the web page] appeal to them. Also, I think we tried harder because the project is out there for everyone to see.” Another student said “We wrote about things we wanted to write about and handed it in, but it is over the Internet instead of on the teacher’s desk.”
The importance of providing an authentic audience for student writers is confirmed by W. Michael Reed in an article that assesses the impact of computer-based writing instruction. He says that one of the most important findings in recent research is that writing using computer-mediated communication is "making the notion of audience more authentic. . . . By having an authentic audience ready and available to respond in a split second, students can practice attending to an audience often and immediately. Hall and Hall (1991) found that their student writers attended more to style so that readers could better understand their work. They also found that the students rewrote more because of audience response" (431).
In the virtual classroom/studio, a chatroom provides the “split-second” responses Reed refers to. The chatroom allows students to log-on from any computer with Internet access and essentially converse in writing. While students were unable to coordinate chatroom sessions with their group members on a regular basis because classes at different campuses met at different times, the students’ frequent email communication provided much the same experience with a bit more time delay between responses. Many students commented that they were surprised to discover how recipients of their email messages often misinterpreted the messages’ intended meanings.Then they carefully rewrote the messages and asked a teacher or a classmate to read and comment on the edited version before re-sending it. In this way, e-mail communication prompted students to revise frequently. Project deadlines also served as a motivator for students to produce clearly written prose. When they felt that they were “running out of time” to complete assignments, they made sure that their messages communicated exactly what they needed from their group members before sending those messages.
One concern about having students use email and chatroom communication in composition classes is reported by Bernard Susser in a recent article that evaluates research on networked computer environments. Susser reports that “looking at transcripts of peer-group conversations, Marx (1990) finds that this type of writing ‘seems to provide little practice for sustained, formal written communication’ (p.25)” (71). For that reason it should be used, as we use it in the Virtual Team Teaching Project, in addition to formal essay writing assignments in the curriculum. The value of email and chats lies in their ability to provide an authentic audience that “‘encourages critical awareness about how communication, or miscommunication, occurs’ (Dimatteo, 1991, p. 9)” (qtd. in Susser 69) and in their ability to “generate more student-to-student transactions than a regular classroom” (Barker & Kemp 17). In addition, students need practice in such informal writing because most will employ this type of writing much more in their professional lives than they will use formal essay writing.
Barker, Thomas T., and Fred O. Kemp. “Network Theory: A Postmodern Pedagogy for theWriting Classroom.” Computers and Community: Teaching Composition in the Twenty- FirstCentury. Ed. Carolyn Handa. Portsmouth: Boynton Cook, 1990. 1-27.
Reed, W. Michael. “Assessing the Impact of Computer-Based Writing Instruction.” Journal of Research on Computing in Education 28 (1996): 418-437.
Susser, Bernard. “Networks and Project Work: Alternative Pedagogies for Writing with Computers.” Computers and Composition 10.3 (1993): 63-89.
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Organization
of Student Web
Sites
In the VTT project, one of the first assignments students work on in small groups is collaboratively writing a Web Page Proposal. Students post their proposals in the virtual studio where peers respond with comments and suggestions. This traditional project assignment may, of course, be evaluated by traditional methods, as can the written elements of students' web pages, including introductions, picture captions, and link annotations.
However, the non-traditional elements of the web pages can also be considered to conform to traditional evaluation criteria such as the correct use of punctuation and transitions. For example, the directional graphics a student chooses, such as buttons, arrows, and text links, serve as navigational guides similar to punctuation by informing readers where to pause or stop, as commas or periods do. Besides guiding readers in these mechanical ways, graphic elements also serve as relational transitions among the pieces of information in web sites. Just as written transitions like "however," "although," "consequently," etc., explain the precise relationships between paragraphs, sentences and words in text, creative use of graphic linking devices can do the same in web sites. Consider, for example, the transitional graphic elements used within this site. Instead of repeating the same words to serve as transitions as we might have in an essay, we often use the same "magic" graphics to lead readers from an idea in section of a page to a related idea in another. These are not simply random choices. We have carefully considered how the type of graphics we choose impacts the meaning of the transitions they utilize. For instance, our repetition of identical graphics in linking sections might be considered to serve as graphic representations of the words "similarly," or "for example." Conversely, the introduction of new graphics in a section or on a connected page usually indicates a shift in emphasis or topic as a transitional phrase would begin a new paragraph in text.
In class, instructors refer to these graphic representations of transitional and punctuational concepts as students build their web pages, hoping that perhaps such a visual lesson might help them similarly to visualize these elements in their offline compositions as well.
In hypertext evaluation, this organizational process can perhaps be described as answering the following questions composed from information presented in Joseph Janangelo's CCC article:
1. Does the choice and placement of transitional elements "illuminate intellectual connections" (28) and rhetorical relations?
2. Does the web author use "a shaping strategy that [. . .] transform[s] ready-made material into coherent and persuasive nonsequential text"? (31)
Janangelo, Joseph. "Joseph Cornell and the
Artistry of Composing Persuasive Hypertexts." College Composition and
Communication 49.1 (1998).
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Content
and Development of Student Web
Sites
As in traditional essay evaluation, determining the content quality of students' hypertext documents begins with matching the content of the finished product with content requirements of the project assignment. Then the individual topics presented in the hypertext content can be examined to determine if the authors have included adequate information, examples or evidence, to define, explain or argue the points they make about those topics.
In hypertext evaluation, the second part of this process can perhaps be described as answering the following questions:
1. Does the work demonstrate the authors' close reading of selected textual elements and studied visual comprehension of selected graphics?
2. Can readers infer the rhetorical purposes for which the authors chose the elements (to inform, explain, define, persuade, etc.)?
3. Do the selected elements adequately fulfill their rhetorical purposes?
Follow this link to read the content requirements of this project.
According to these criteria as applied to Composition 101 classes, how would you evaluate each of the following student web sites?
(Note: Unfortunately, many of our students' web sites were lost or damaged in a recent crash of the WSU server. Consequently, some of the images and links in the following sites may be missing or broken.)
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Style
and Tone of Student Web
Pages
In a paper presented at the 1997 CCCC Conference, Kristine L. Blair explains that "for Richard Lanham (1993), the increasing reliance on technology dictates that we not just look through texts for some universal meaning behind them but must also look at texts, to see how font, style, graphics, color, and layout are rhetorical and epistemological actions in which traditional concerns with purpose, style, and tone are both upheld or, as Lanham suggests, subverted" (6).
The traditional evaluation criteria of style and tone seem more easily adaptable to hypertext documents because they suggest more artistic elements of written composition. For example, style is evident in, among other elements, the type of backgrounds, graphics, fonts, and design that student web authors choose for their pages. Unrestricted by teachers' formal essay requirements of a 12 point easily readable font on sheets of 8 1/2 x 11 inch white paper with 1 inch margins, students are free to experiment with style in entirely new ways in hypertext. They even have the option of adding music or other sound effects. Their choices of these stylistic elements combine to determine the tone of their web pages, and, as in essay evaluation, their sites can be evaluated on how appropriately their tone matches their subject and audience. Sounds fairly easy, doesn't it? But, consider the difference in style and tone between this site and those of our colleagues Nancy Ruff and Sherry Mitchell, and Amy Beasley and Connie Chismar. How would you evaluate the style and tone of these diverse presentations on very similar topics, designed for the same audience?
According to these criteria as applied to composition classes, how would you evaluate each of the following student web sites?
(Note: Unfortunately, many of our students' web sites were lost or damaged in a recent crash of the WSU server. Consequently, some of the images and links in the following sites may be missing or broken.)
Fall
'98 The Color Purple Group+
Blair, Kristine L. "Technology, Teacher
Training, and Postmodern Literacies." Paper presented at CCCC Conference
Phoenix, AZ, March 12-15, 1997.
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