Teaching and Evaluating Writing in the Age of Computers and High-Stakes Testing

Teaching and Evaluating Writing in the Age of Computers and High-Stakes Testing serves this dual need by offering a theoretical framework, actual case studies, and practical methods for evaluating student writing. By examining issues in writing assessment--ranging from the development of electronic portfolios to the impact of state-wide, standards-based assessment methods on secondary and post-secondary courses--this book discovers four situated techniques of authentic assessment that are already in use at a number of locales throughout the United States.

These techniques stress:

• interacting with students as communicators using synchronous and asynchronous environments;
• describing the processes and products of student learning rather than enumerating deficits;
• situating pedagogy and evaluation within systems that incorporate rather than exclude local variables; and
• distributing assessment among diverse audiences.

By advocating for a flexible system of communication-based assessment in computer-mediated writing instruction, this book validates teachers' and students' experiences with writing and also acknowledges the real-world weight of the new writing components on the SAT and ACT, as well as on state-mandated standardized writing and proficiency exams.