The shape of electronic writing: Evaluating and assessing computer-assisted writing processes and products

Computers and Composition

13, 245-251

(1996)

The Shape of Electronic Writing: Evaluating and Assessing Computer-Assisted Writing Processes and Products PAMELA TAKAYOSHI University of Louisville

Three features of electronic texts have been theorized as changing writing and writing instruction: the creation of a seamless flow of text, word publishing as a rhetorical act, and hypertextual writing and thinking. This article argues that these changes also carry implications for how teachers read, respond to, and evaluate student writing. Furthermore, this article stresses the importance of linking practices of writing assessment to these changes in writing processes, products, and teaching.

communication,

computer-mediated portfolio

portfolio, writing,

evaluation,

computer-assisted

electronic

rhetoric,

hypertext

visual

computer-assisted

We are in what Elizabeth Klem and Charles Moran (1991) have described as an “amphibious stage, operating as we do partly in print, partly on screen. . . poised between two worlds” (p. 132). In such a world, teachers of computer-assisted writing are constantly negotiating transitions in physical space, from traditional classrooms to computer classrooms, and from face-to-face computer-mediated space; in theories, from theories of literacy based in print media to those based in electronic media; and in pedagogies, from traditional to computer-assisted. From a vantage point between the two worlds, instructors and theorists are asking basic questions about the nature of literacy instruction as it moves from a print world to a computerized world and, sometimes, back again. A great deal of work has been devoted to giving shape to electronic text. With the introduction of computers into composition classrooms and curricula, scholars have identified and explored several potential changes: changes in writing processes of invention, drafting, and revision (Daiute, 1983; Haas, 1989; Hawisher, 1987, 1988; R. Rodrigues & D. Rodrigues, 1984); an increased connectivity between students and teachers that brings with it an expanding exposure to different world views (Cooper & Selfe, 1990; Hawisher & Moran, 1993); an increase in multiple literacy demands on students (Selfe, 1989); and fundamental changes in writing and reading processes (Charney, 1994; Johnson-Eilola, 1994; Slatin, 1990). Several theorists have noted that these changes in writing and reading processes necessitate a corresponding transition from traditional’ classroom pedagogies to computer-assisted pedagogies. Janet Eldred I would like to thank Brian Huot for all his assistance and advice in thinking through these issues. Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to Pamela Takayoshi, Department of English, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY 40292. e-mail: . ‘Throughout this article, I use the term traditional as a way of differentiating traditional) and computer-assisted classrooms, pedagogies, processes, and texts.

between noncomputer

(i.e.,

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(1989). for example, argued that for computer technologies to work with instruction, they must be well integrated into pedagogies that support their use. As we have fleshed out the effects of computers on our pedagogies and writing theories, however, one aspect of teaching writing with computers has generally remained amorphous: assessment of student writing. If we agree that computers can challenge and thus change not only pedagogies but also writing and reading processes, then it follows that these changes necessitate a transition from assessment practices based in theories about print literacy to assessment practices based in computer-assisted composition theory. This movement raises several questions: . . . .

How do changes in literacy acts and theories affect evaluation standards and practices‘? How do computer-assisted writing processes change texts‘? How do those textual changes affect acts of response and assessment? If computers give students “more control of the page” (Sullivan, 1991, p. 43), then how do teachers’ assessment standards account for changes resulting from that changed control?

The nature and shape of electronic writing suggest new forms of writing evaluation. Computers and composition specialists have discussed ways computers contribute to texts that look different in terms of both their features and their format (Bolter, 1991; Landow, 1992; Rusckiewicz, 1988; Sullivan, 1991) and how these changes in textual features and formats create multilayered literacies (Selfe, 1989; Tuman. 1992) and demand new reading practices (Haas, 1989; Haas & Hayes, 1986). Yet, little attention has been directed at new assessment practices that might result from differently shaped products and their attendant reading practices and multilayered literacy demands. Specifically, the shape of electronic writing and texts highlights three important features of the evolving nature of reading and writing processes: .

.

.

The creation of electronic texts makes dramatically visible the fluid and recursive nature of writing by dissolving distinct segments of writing processes into one seamless flow of prose. With technologies such as word processing and page design software and laser printers, word publishing enters writing classrooms; thus, the relationship between content (words and their meanings) and form (the way those words are arranged on the page) becomes more foregrounded as an area of rhetorical in(ter)vention. Hypermedia and hypertextual thinking and writing both throw into question and illuminate the roles and processes of readers and writers.

Assessment of students in computer-assisted composition classrooms must be responsive to such changes in literacy acts. To realize the potential of computer-assisted writing and writing instruction, we might turn our attention to changes that computers have contributed to writing processes and texts. In the process, we’ll see how those changes might also contribute to changes in our assessment of those texts. In this article, then, I want to give shape to the ambiguous and ill-defined features of assessment in what Klem and Moran (199 1) have identified as the amphibious nature of our position between a print and an electronic world. And, in giving these features and issues shape, I consider the ways our conceptions of assessment might evolve as we carry them from one world to another.

The Shape

THE FLUIDITY

of Electronic

247

Writing

OF COMPUTER-ASSISTED

WRITING

Although some computers and composition specialists have argued that computer technologies revolutionize writing instruction by reshaping writing and reading, there also exists a predominant sense that computers affect writing instruction by offering instructors and theorists new lenses through which to look at the central issues of writing instruction. Rather than arguing that computers re-create writing completely anew, this position holds that computers can make writing processes seem new by making visible the ways writers and readers have always dealt with text. Within this position, computers are not catalysts for change but a lens through which instructors’ and students’ visions of writing can change. The benefits of this new lens for students are vast within a process pedagogy emphasizing student awareness of individual writing processes. Through the use of computers, for instance, unconscious mental processing becomes more visible, as Costanzo (1994) pointed out: “computers serve as enactive models. They offer physical analogies to the mental and perceptual activities of writing, giving inexperienced writers access to alternatives that might otherwise remain invisible” (p. 17). This enhanced visibility helps student writers see the recursive nature of writing and allows them to experience firsthand the social nature of writing. Computers make more visible the ways in which writing processes are recursive rather than discrete stages that can be clearly demarcated. Computers make features of writing visible for students in ways that traditional classrooms cannot. By making writing processes more public, for example, through in-class writing days and workshops and through the ease of electronically shared texts, computer-assisted pedagogies can reflect writing’s collaborative and social nature. In computer-assisted composition classes, texts are disseminated through technologies such as electronic mail, bulletin boards, listservs, and common class directories. Using these technologies can emphasize the connection between the feedback student writers receive in workshops, class discussions, and electronic sharing and the writing that develops from these social interactions. Additionally, in a class where participants share and circulate texts to others through computers, participants move from hard copy texts, which emphasize the writing processes’ final product, to electronic texts, which through their malleability emphasize the impermanence of the draft. In a traditional classroom where students deal with hard copy text, it’s possible to point to a text and say “this is the original draft” or “this is the second draft.” In an electronic classroom, however, there are no discrete stages marked by distinct drafts. Electronic drafting creates one ongoing process-“a seamless flow of prose which culminates in a final piece”-with the resulting effect that the “segmented stages that have contributed to our linear writing paradigm of prewriting, writing, and rewriting begin to dissolve in the electronic classroom” (Sullivan, 1991, p. 48). One implicit assumption in introducing computers to composition, then, is that writers and readers deal with texts in process more than at distinct (and completed) stages of process. With computer-assisted writing, it’s more difficult to identify where one draft ends and another begins. Because the electronic text is the site of all revisions, and revisions are being made to the original text, revisions erase the original draft. For this reason, Patricia Sullivan (1991) has argued, electronic texts dissolve what we have in composition traditionally thought of as distinct stages in the writing process. She claimed that the electronic drafting process makes “the distinction between early and late drafts increasingly seamless and less distinctive” (p. 48). The “first draft” and the “second draft” or the “revised, final version” all suggest that there was some process students

TAKAYOSHI

went through to end up with a series of products which culminate in one bigger, more important final product. The fluidity between invention notes, a rough draft, and the version turned in for a grade is emphasized in an electronic environment, where students can cut and paste and carry over from one document to another easily. Still, students continue to arrive in writing classrooms believing that experienced writers sit down and produce perishable prose in one setting or that everything writers do leads to the most important step: the final product. In an electronic classroom, these myths of product can be thrown into question by becoming explicit topics for class discussion. How do students decide when to start drafting? When to revise? How do they decide when a paper is finished, in final draft form? Related to these questions are questions of text form: How do students decide when to print a text? What are the differences between print and online text? When should students print? If they don’t print out some versions of their papers and then print out other versions at different times, say, in the middle of the invention process, it’s not so clear that one phase of the writing is over and another is ready to begin. These questions ask that students think about their individual processes of writing, that they become explicitly conscious of their own ways of creating text. This self-awareness is a key feature of process and portfolio pedagogies. In an electronic environment, students’ attention can easily be turned to such questions of their decision-making processes in writing because traditional markers of their processes (i.e., hard copy text) may be deemphasized. Students need to mark their own spaces within the fluidity of a seamless process.’ These questions are important ones to ask within pedagogies that have as a goal increasing students’ explicit understanding of their writing processes. For although computer-assisted writing can make more visible the unconscious and unrecognized features of writing and reading, it can also lead students to further entrench written products as the end goal of writing. Johndan Johnson-Eilola (I 992) pointed out: Unfortunately, the move from typewritten page to the more malleable computer memory/display often serves only to make the dichotomy between process and product more pronounced than when the intermediate product was pen and paper rather than virtual text. the virtual, fluid computer text is never delivered because, in most cases. the text will be frozen into print as a final stage of the sculpting. (p, 100)

As Johnson-Eilola acknowledged, although students may be learning and writing within explicitly process-centered pedagogies, for many student writers the end product remains the objective. This may be emphasized for some students if they print only their final drafts. Printing could then become an implicit signal that the final draft is the ultimate goal, with hard copy becoming the last step in making the paper complete, finished. The paper may be drafted, typed, responded to, reviewed, and revised online, but printing the text could imbue it with a certain finality. Encouraging students to reflect on the meanings for them of these components of computer-assisted writing can lead them to questions about the basic nature of literacy. such as “what is a final draft?” The arbitrariness of the final electronic draft (it comes about when the writer decides to print it out and turn it in) makes more visible for new writers the arbitrariness of all final drafts, demonstrating for them that there are no universal standards against which they >Within the context of this discussion, it might be more accurate to refer to writing processes as a wriring procrss.

However, the singularity of such a term may misleadingly suggest one universal writing process, the same for all writers, rather than one seamless process a writer goes through in producing texts. As the seamless process for different writers may vary vastly for those writers. I retain the use of the term writinK proc’ess~.~.

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can measure their writing and say, finally, “It’s perfect. ” Rather, the writer decides when that particular draft is as near perfect as she or he wants it for that particular situation. This emphasis on contextual understandings of writing (within the context of a writer’s own writing, within the context of the writing situation) helps writers realize that there are no correct or easy answers for writing. Instead, there are rhetorically informed decisions writers make about text. Students certainly do make these decisions, but perhaps without a conscious awareness of the choices they’ve made. Student writers gain more control over those choices by understanding them and the processes by which they make them. Similarly, all writers make decisions about the “look” of their writing, although without a conscious awareness of that process. Another feature of writing, therefore, that computers can potentially foreground as a subject for writing instruction is the area of visual rhetoric. THE EMERGENCE OF VISUAL RHETORIC With computer-assisted writing, students gain more control over the way their documents look. Whereas the standard format of student-produced text in most composition classes has been l-in. (2.5cm) margins surrounding a block of text on an 81/z X 11 in. (22 X 28 cm) sheet of paper, that standard can be modified quickly and easily in computer-assisted classrooms. Students using computers can determine their own page layout and font size, type, and style. However, that computers allow students to take control of the page is not reason enough to incorporate this feature of writing into writing pedagogies. There needs to be a theoretical and pedagogical reason for having students engage in these issues beyond the technological possibility for them to become involved. For Charles Kostelnick (1994), the reasons lay in the relationship between visual elements of page design and the content of the text: “Visual cues transform the text rather than work in isolation. This rhetorical interrelation between visual and verbal is enhanced now that visual elements are more potent and documents can be written and designed simultaneously” (p. 92). With computer-assisted writing, the design of a text can be produced in such a way that the rhetoric of its page design supports the text’s written arguments, giving writers more control over the effects those texts produce on readers. Kostelnick (1989) argued that “by acknowledging visual rhetoric, we recognize that visual choices make a difference-in readers’ attitudes toward a document, in how readers process its information, and in which information they value” (p. 77). Writers can emphasize their arguments and foci through the placement of words on the page, through variations in the size, shape, and emphasis of characters, through the use of white space. This measure of control granted writers has ramifications for the way we think about computer-assisted writing, as Patricia Sullivan (1991) forcefully argued: Through the technology, first through the development of the desktop publishing software and now, increasingly, through the standard word processing package, the writer is entering an era where the published page is more directly under his or her control. This innovation has profound implications for writers, for writing, for the teaching of writing, and for theories of electronic writing. Thus, weighing the consequences of “taking control of the page” needs to be placed on our agendas in the nineties. (p. 44)

Until now, composition has been concerned not with page design but with the introduction of word-processing packages and laser printers, although page design issues potentially play a central role in the future of composition instruction. Discussions of page

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design and publishing may traditionally lie outside composition classrooms, but, as Sullivan (1991) pointed out, computers bring these issues into composition classrooms even with standard word-processing packages, which increasingly allow for more and more desktop publishing features such as graphics, tables and charts, and columns. Even something as seemingly straightforward as a computer keyboard expands writers’ capabilities to text layout, as Costanzo (1994) suggested: “ . . with word processing, the keyboard becomes something more. Those arrow keys, insert, delete, control, and function keys stand for movements within texts and for textual transformations” (p. 15). Computers can bring together in a unified and mutually reciprocal relationship the text’s surface features and content; each supports the other. Yet, for the most part, students and instructors in composition classes may be facing page design issues for the first time, without any previous experiences or training in design issues. Accordingly, the rhetoric of page layout may become a more important issue for composition studies. Incorporating into pedagogies discussions of “sound, proven criteria for judging design effectiveness” (Berryman, 1990, p. 2) and “common design pitfalls” (Parker, 1993, pp. 183-205) can help students become aware of the ways design supports or undermines their rhetorical purposes. This requires not only that students and instructors think about the features of text available to them but also that they weigh the implications of those features. The significance in bringing these issues into composition classrooms in unprecedented ways lies less in the changes for texts than in the changes for our thinking about texts. John Rusckiewicz

(1988)

declared

that the

real excitement for writing teachers lies beyond the ability to look good on paper. It is in the way the new technology may enhance and stimulate the imagination, unloosing powers that may make even the term writing inadequate to describe what we do in the future when we sit down to compose. (p. 10)

Research into and theories of visual rhetoric developed in professional writing studies can be helpful in defining these initial discussions of visual rhetoric for composition studies (Hartley, 198.5; Horton, 1990; Wurman. 1990). Without careful consideration of the relationship of visual rhetoric and rhetorical goals, computer-generated textual features could easily become the grammar and punctuation of current-traditional rhetorics, with an emphasis in teaching and writing on the correctness of the surface features. What is important to emphasize is the way these features work with the content of the text. These features are not meaningful or desirable in and of themselves but in the ways they support, enact, and make more effective a writer’s rhetorical goals; this, in turn, raises the question of how our assessment practices are modified as a result of the changes brought about by reading computer-assisted text. How will instructors respond to and evaluate elements of visual rhetoric and a paper’s content without falling back into a current-traditional emphasis on surface features of text‘? Certainly one way would be to emphasize the rhetorical in visual rhetoric, by addressing how a text’s visual elements support or undermine the writer’s rhetorical purposes. Computer-assisted-instruction writing teachers must address other issues related to this question: What is a supportive relationship between visual rhetoric and a writer’s rhetorical purposes? How much will and should visual rhetoric be valued (within pedagogies, within curriculum, within student texts)? Visual rhetoric is not a new feature of text as a result of computers, but it is now an element over which students can gain more control and understanding within computer-assisted pedagogies that are concerned with these issues. Computer-assisted writing and electronic texts that are meant to be read online raise still other questions that

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The Shape of Electronic Writing

I believe computer and composition specialists need dramatically raises many of these questions is hypertext.

HYPERTEXTUAL

THINKING

to consider.

AND WRITING

One

area

that

CHANGES

Composition studies have been heavily influenced by reader-response and social construction theories, yet the roles and activities of reader and writer have largely remained separate and distinct. Although composition instruction may emphasize reading and writing as reciprocal acts, the two acts often remain distinct and clear-cut from one another: A writer writes, a reader reads, and perhaps the writer will write again in response to the reader and her or his own rereading of the text. Hypertext complicates and potentially blurs this division between writing and reading: “the figure of the hypertext author approaches, even if it does not entirely merge with, that of the reader; the functions of reader and writer become more deeply intertwined with each other than ever before” (Landow, 1992, p. 71) as the hypertext reader becomes a writer creating the shape of the text through the choices she or he makes. In hypertext, “readers cannot avoid writing the text itself, since every choice they make is an act of writing” (Bolter, 1991, p. 144). In his study of hypertext and the history of writing, Jay David Bolter (1991) claimed that printed books are moving to the periphery of society as computer technologies replace them. Bolter, however, saw this not as the demise of the author and the printed word but, rather, as a reconfiguration and reconsideration of these concepts. Describing hypertexts as a network of verbal elements rather than a fixed linear arrangement of letters (p. 5), Bolter argued that electronic texts demand a set of skills that differ from those needed to read and write printed books (p. 40). Readers and writers of electronic texts accommodate themselves to the features of a new medium. As Bolter described them, texts in this medium do not possess a single hierarchical-linear structure, do not speak with one persona, and do not depend on rhetorical transitions. Thus, they are more fluid and fragmentary, changing with each individual reader’s particular reading: “an electronic book may speak with different voices to different readers” (Bolter, 1991, p. 7). These changing physical characteristics may have a profound impact on literacy theories that have traditionally been based in print media. One such effect Bolter foresaw was that “print will no longer define the organization and presentation of knowledge, as it has for the past five centuries” (p. 2). Computers, Bolter concluded, are restructuring writing by changing the relationships between author and text, reader and text, and author, reader, and text. For composition classes, one of the strengths of hypertexts is that they also make more visible existing processes of reading and writing. For composition students learning about writing and reading processes, hypertext models the nonlinear ways experienced writers read and write: Requiring users to choose their own nonlinear paths forces students to model the reading processes of experienced readers. Making those processes visible makes them more readily available for discussion and reflection by students, which, in turn, can help students and instructors develop their conceptions of literacy and text. The practical effect of this is unclear. Johnson-Eilola (1994) for example, asserted that hypertext “helps us revise theories of reading, writing, and literacy in key ways by making various traits of these theories visible” (p. 203). Other scholars have adopted the position that hypertext is disruptive of existing practices and definitions of writing and reading acts (Charney, 1994; Dobrin, 1994; Dryden, 1994; Moulthrop & Kaplan, 1994; C. E Smith, 1991; C. L. Smith, 1994). Within this perspective, however, there remains

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disagreement on whether the rupture might contribute to a rethinking of existing literacy theory. Writers and readers approach hypertexts with sets of conventions and rules for usage that differ from those used with traditional printed texts. This is partly a result of the physical nature of working in hypertext. Existing only in computers, hypertexts are multilinear, multisequential, and, thus, less predetermined for the reader by the writer. Because the links between nodes (or the individual screens of text) in a hypertext must be chosen by the reader, hypertext readers play a central role in determining the outcome of their readings. This has led some to argue that hypertext brings with it the potential for radically altering notions and acts of reading and writing. Johnson-Eilola (1994) considered the alterations hypertext affects in reading and writing processes to be important changes that reverberate through teaching and theories. Hypertext, he suggested, holds the potential for theorists and teachers to “remap their conceptions of literacy, to reconsider the complex, interdependent nature of the ties between technology, society, and the individual in the acts of writing, reading, and thinking” (p. 204). Thus, hypertext becomes a site much like previous computer technologies, which, through their newness, allowed theorists and educators to see composition issues illuminated in new ways. Although Davida Charney (1994) pointed out some limitations of hypertext that future developers must consider,’ she also believed in the illuminating effect of technology: “Hypertext has the potential to change fundamentally how we write, how we read, how we teach these skills, and even how we conceive of text itself” (p. 239). Johnson-Eilola (1994) and Charney ( 1994) assumed the radical newness of hypertext as a medium, and they argued that this newness does and will have tremendous impact on the ways we write, read, and think and, thus, on the ways we teach these processes. David Dobrin (1994) vehemently disagreed with this view. He held that although hypertext does require readers to develop new reading and writing conventions, this does not make it a radically new form. In fact, he stated that these new reading and writing processes are not endemic to hypertext alone but are necessary for reading “numerous print texts [that] also allow readers to navigate through them at will” (p. 309). Although Dobrin agreed that users will need to learn new strategies to be literate in the hypertextual medium, he disagreed that hypertext is a new text: Hypertext is simply one text structure among many, made unique by the text conventions it has, conventions that guide the reader’s attention and allow him or her to navigate through the text. The conventions are interesting. but these text conventions are not different in kind from other text conventions. (p. 308)

As Dobrin himself acknowledged, the position an individual adopts regarding the radicalness of new technologies plays a significant role in how that individual views the issues related to that technology. Hypertexts and other texts that remain in electronic form also raise several issues for readers of those texts on the basis of their physical textuality. Electronic texts differ from print texts in their basic features: They are measured not by the page but by the screen; electronic texts must be read with a computer, which constrains the location and position of the reader in relation to the text; although readers can scroll through an electronic text,

‘Charney

(1994) argued that future developers of hypertext

demanded by the new medium

inhibit

must consider ways changes in reading processes

as well as encourage readers. The new text form may make It difficult

SOme readers to make bense of the text or to find needed information

there.

for

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they can’t flip through pages to get a sense of how long the text is going to be; and, unless readers are reading in a what-you-see-is-what-you-get word-processing program, they won’t have features of page design so important to an implicit understanding of the organization and texture of an argument. With these changes come changes in our ways of reading. Christina Haas (1989) identified four areas “in which the computer had a negative influence on writing by causing reading difficulties” (p. 19) for writing students. Briefly, those areas are: the differences between what is on the screen and what will be on the printed page, a distrust of the writer’s own abilities to proofread on screen, a difficulty in planning and seeing reorganizational moves of text, and an inability to get a sense of the whole text. Additionally, Christina Haas and John Hayes (1986) discovered in a study of computer-writing students that students were less accurate in their retrieval of information when they read from a screen than when they read from paper. Features of hypertexts and of texts that remain in electronic form thus point to several areas computers and composition specialists must address in considering how these texts will be evaluated. Features of text meant to be read online, such as the organization of a text’s elements and the ease with which the text allows readers to make logical links, will require assessment standards unneeded for traditional hard copy texts. Traditional assessment practices of student writing do not account for the ways form and content can exist in a reciprocally supportive manner within electronic texts. Reading and responding to text online requires that we move beyond print-based methods of responding to and evaluating student text: . . . .

How do methods of responding to and evaluating student writing account for the rhetoric of the page/screen? What additions must be made to assessment procedures to account for online texts such as hypertexts? What effect do changed reading processes have on readers’ understandings and evaluation of a text’s effectiveness? What features might define a text’s effectiveness when that text remains electronic?

Related to these issues of assessment are questions about instruction. What features of electronic texts will instruction emphasize? How will instructors incorporate these issues into discussions of writing theory?

ASSESSMENT OF COMPUTER-ASSISTED WRITING PROCESSES AND PRODUCTS Changes in electronic texts necessitate changes in ways of responding to and assessing text in a computer-assisted environment. If we accept that reading and writing processes are changing as a result of an integral involvement of computers in writing classrooms, then the ways that we evaluate those reading and writing processes will change also. Andrea in electronic classrooms should be Herrmann ( 199 1) has argued that “assessment concerned not only with changes taking place in students’ writing processes, but also with changes taking place in written products” (p. 157). Although Herrmann’s advice is solid, it would be a mistake to dismiss changes in processes or to assume that processes within computer environments remain constant or arbitrarily resemble the writing process as described in the process studies of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The important issues are where and how teaching is linked with assessment. Writing assessment practice cannot be changed to reflect changing writing processes and products without considering

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the ways assessment is tied with teaching electronic texts. In asking how response and assessment processes change as a result of changing reading and writing processes, we might also ask how teaching should change. The importance of the link between writing instruction and writing assessment has been established by scholars such as Edward White ( 1994) Peter Elbow ( 1993). and Brian Huot (in press). A good example of this integral link between teaching and assessment is work done with portfolios. As Huot pointed out, “many teachers. researchers, administrators, and advocates see portfolios as more than just another way to assess student writing” (in press); for this reason, he stressed that “we need to ask questions concerning the relationship between writing evaluation and teaching if we are to understand and appreciate how portfolios work” (in press). in the same way that Huot focused his discussion on larger shifts in pedagogical theory that result from uses of portfolios, teachers and researchers of computer-assisted composition would do well to consider similar shifts in pedagogical theory in relation to the response and assessment of electronic texts. This consideration might answer the following questions: . . l

.

How do electronic changes in processes and products affect the kinds of writing instructors assign to students? How do those changing expectations affect reader expectations and, thus, assessment‘? What problems arise when instructors apply traditional assessment and response models to electronic texts? What new, alternative models might address and account for the differences between electronic and print texts?

Instructors and theorists will need to be cautious in working through these issues in order to avoid imposing traditional notions of processes to electronic writing at the expense of recognizing the potential of those changes for helping students become assessors of their own writing processes and products. For example, as computer-assisted writing creates a seamless flow of prose, parts of processes become hazy, and a problem arises for assessment: The categories around which we have structured our theories of response are disappearing. How do we assign, let alone grade, drafts? What is a draft‘? What is process work anymore? Indeed, “process” and “draft” concepts might no longer be useful in computer-assisted classrooms. instead of grading or responding to specific drafts, instructors might want to distinguish between writing processes, Although students might be required to print out drafts at each stage before those stages are overwritten and revised on the one electronic text, this seems little more than applying print-based notions of process to computer-assisted writing. It is important to remember that the lens we use is necessarily clouded or influenced by what we already know and by what we already expect to see. As in composition studies in general, certain pedagogical approaches to using computers in writing instruction have maintained varying positions of dominance within the computers and composition area, usually positions that have paralleled those of composition. The introduction of computers to writing classes, for example, reflected the current-traditional paradigm James Berlin (1987) identified in composition studies. Within this paradigm, computers were used as skill-and-dri~1 tools emphasizing correct structures, sentence-levei accuracy, and the communication of already known truths. Computers were even seen as removing the teacher from the grading process; within a current-traditional model that valued the features of text above all else, what mattered in response was that the errors were

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identified and corrected (Marling, 1984). Later, word-processing packages entered writing classrooms within a framework of process-centered pedagogies that emphasized students’ individual writing processes through explicit instruction of writing processes (invention, drafting, and revision). Within this model, computers supported individualized teacher response through computer feedback programs that kept track of writing levels at which teachers needed to respond (Kotler & Anandam, 1983). More recently, networked computers have supported social, collaborative models of composition theory and instruction. Within this composition instruction model, response and peer collaboration is favored (Mabrito, 1991; Sire, 1989). When used with the collaborative model, hypermedia bring to the forefront of instruction reader-response theories, critical theory, and cultural studies approaches to language that argue that language creates reality as much as reflects it. Accordingly, in order to understand how to evaluate the texts produced through computers, it may be that we need to step outside what we already know about text. Looking at the assessment of computer-assisted writing through the lens of what we already know about assessment can lead us to overlook some major components of what goes into computer-based text production and reception, as suggested in the previous discussion of electronic text features: fluidity of computer-assisted writing, visual rhetoric, and hypertexts. In the same way that portfolio-based assessment has been offered as a way to make students more familiar with their own writing processes and more aware of the choices they make in writing, writing in a computer-assisted environment can demand that writers make their own choices, choices that are supported by students’ own decisions about their writing. Rather than having everyone in the class trade drafts or revisions in a particular class meeting, teachers in computer-assisted classrooms might run open writing workshops where students determine their writing needs at whatever point in the drafting they identify. Some students might write on their drafts, others might trade papers for peer responses, and still others might work on revising their papers. The strength in such an approach for assessment is in having students become assessors of their own processes and products, in having them ask themselves key questions about where their text is in its process of becoming, where it needs work, and what kinds of assistance others can offer at those points. Unlike portfolios now considered standard in a traditional classroom, student portfolios emerging from such a class might contain artifacts of each writer’s process. A danger related to these changes in text, however, is the danger Johnson-Eilola (1992) pointed to: “the virtual, fluid computer text is never delivered because, in most cases, the text will be frozen into print as a final stage of the sculpting” (p. 100). In an environment where processes as we have traditionally known them are disappearing, it is crucial that we reconceive electronic processes. Without understanding electronic processes and, in turn, the way those processes change computer-assisted writing products, instructors and students can easily fall into an emphasis on products at the expense of attention to writing processes. What is needed are practices of response and assessment based in theoretical understandings of the relationship between form and content in electronic texts. When we move into computer-assisted classrooms, we do not stop responding to and evaluating student writing. Thus, response and assessment issues remain important for anyone teaching in computer-assisted classrooms. Computers and composition specialists have been concerned with the ways computers affect pedagogies and theories of writing. Likewise, we cannot ignore the ramifications of computers on response and assessment procedures and, in turn, the effect of those changing response and assessment practices

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and theories on teaching. We can use the features of computer-assisted writing that make existing writing and reading processes more visible to inexperienced writers and readers. By engaging students in critical assessments of the differences between hard copy and online copy or between reading a printed text and a hypertext, we ask that students think about and articulate processes about which we all have too little explicit understanding. Response in this context can build upon students’ emerging understanding of themselves as writers and readers. Assessment and response procedures in a computer-assisted environment thus can support instructional strategies that encourage and support students in uncovering and creating themselves as active literate individuals. Pamela Takayoshi is assistant professor of English and Director of Computer-Assisted Instruction at the University of Louisville. She is currently working with Kristine Blair on an edited collection of essays on computer technologies, gender, and writing instruction. Her e-mail address is .

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