Green Squiggly Lines:

Writing Assessment in Computer-Mediated Composition

This move, however, has another consequence, one that is often overlooked in discussions of assessment and evaluation as well as in studies of computer-mediated writing instruction. By insisting on the teacher's authority-as opposed to an administrator's or testing agency's authority-to act as final evaluator and grader of students' work, computer-and-composition specialists exclude the students from meaningful participation in the full range of reading, responding and evaluation processes. In making the evaluation of student essays an activity based solely on the authority and knowledge of the classroom teacher, Finn and Sirc inadvertently reconstitute a teacher-centered, authoritarian power structure associated with traditional, face-to-face classrooms. Sirc addresses this issue in "The Twin Worlds of Electronic Conferencing," where he argues for an expanded notion of textuality that would include students and their contextualized, communicative actions in any evaluation of their work.