Green Squiggly Lines:

Writing Assessment in Computer-Mediated Composition

Eric Crump (1998) also notes the defiant, burlesque writing of students taking part in a synchronous MOO chat:

In spite of efforts over the years to put students at ease in the classroom, I have never seen students drop their guard enough to actually risk making fun of me (to my face). Even though my face was right in the same room with these students, as soon as we entered the MUD we were in a different world, and they knew the rules had changed. The easy informality that seems to come naturally in the MUD contributes, I think, to an environment nearly free of fear. Teachers are often satisfied with forcing students to perform, and fear is an effective tool if mere obedience is the goal, but student learning is never served by fear. (p. 190)

Crump's work shows the possibility of defiant discourse existing along with serious work, it shows a pedagogy that is not afraid of taking risks of imaging classroom discourse as something other than respectful. The normal modes of discourse in the classroom are fractured, challenged, made into something ever so slightly new and different. But how can this burlesque, fractured discourse exist-and be evaluated-within academic institutions?