In this book, Troy Hicks - a leader in the teaching of digital writing - collaborates with seven National Writing Project teacher consultants to provide a protocol for assessing students' digital writing. This collection highlights six case studies centered on evidence the authors have uncovered through teacher inquiry and structured conversations about students' digital writing. Beginning with a digital writing sample, each teacher offers an analysis of a student's work and a reflection on how collaborative assessment affected his or her teaching. Because the authors include teachers from kindergarten to college, this book provides opportunities for vertical discussions of digital writing development, as well as grade-level conversations about high-quality digital writing. The collection also includes an introduction and conclusion, written by Hicks, that provides context for the inquiry group's work and recommendations for assessment of digital writing.

This text provides an innovative new framework for the formative and holistic assessment of students' digital writing. It also addresses the rapid evolution of writing assessment tools, analyzing the research in clear terms for both techno-phobic and techno-savvy teachers. The author critiques computer automated scoring of student writing, for example, but also considers the possibilities and potential of the future of technology assisted assessments.

In this book, Troy Hicks—a leader in the teaching of digital writing—collaborates with seven National Writing Project teacher consultants to provide a protocol for assessing students’ digital writing. This collection highlights six case studies centered on evidence the authors have uncovered through teacher inquiry and structured conversations about students’ digital writing. Beginning with a digital writing sample, each teacher offers an analysis of a student’s work and a reflection on how collaborative assessment affected his or her teaching. Because the authors include teachers from kindergarten to college, this book provides opportunities for vertical discussions of digital writing development, as well as grade-level conversations about high-quality digital writing. The collection also includes an introduction and conclusion, written by Hicks, that provides context for the inquiry group’s work and recommendations for assessment of digital writing. Book Features: An adaptation of the Collaborative Assessment Conference protocol to help professional learning communities examine students’ digital work. Detailed descriptions of students’ digital writing, including the assessment process and implications for instruction. Links to the samples of student digital writing available online for further review and to be used as digital mentor texts. “Building on his foundational work in helping us to embrace digital writing in the classroom, Hicks and his collaborators help us take the next step to becoming teachers who practice authentic assessment that supports students to learn through digital writing. This is the book (and the thinking) that advances our field.” —Sara Kajder, Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Language and Literacy Education, University of Georgia

Focuses on how writing technologies, specifically digital technologies, affect research - shaping the questions asked, the sites studied, the methodologies used, ethical issues, conclusions, and the actions taken by scholars and teachers. This volume offers an introduction to possible approaches and related methodological and ethical issues.

This book introduces the design and implementation of an assessment model for a new university-level English curriculum in China that aims at developing digital literacy skills. The assessment approach, embedded in the curriculum of an online modular course at Peking University, requires the students to conduct semester-long digital research projects in English in their major fields of study. Combining quantitative and qualitative methods, evaluation rubrics built around Content, Clarity, and Creative/Critical Thinking were developed, evaluated, and refined over three implementation cycles (eight semesters). The book presents a systematic assessment design framework, a set of effective rubrics for evaluating the digital research project, and authentic examples of written and multimedia presentations by Chinese students. Integrating assessment with instruction and technology, the book provides a valuable practical guide to digital literacy assessment for English education in the Outer and Expanding Circle contexts.

Assessment has provided educational institutions with information about student learning outcomes and the quality of education for many decades. But has it informed practice and been fully incorporated into the learning cycle? Conrad and Openo argue that the potential inherent in many of the new learning environments being explored by educators and students has not been fully realized. In this investigation of a variety of assessment methods and learning approaches, the authors aim to discover the tools that engage learners and authentically evaluate education. They insist that moving to new learning environments, specifically those online and at a distance, afford opportunities for educators to adopt only the best practices of traditional face-to-face assessment while exploring evaluation tools made available by a digital learning environment in the hopes of arriving at methods that capture the widest set of learner skills and attributes.

To many academics, composition still represents typewritten texts on 8.5" x 11" pages that follow rote argumentative guidelines. In Toward a Composition Made Whole, Jody Shipka views composition as an act of communication that can be expressed through any number of media and as a path to meaning-making. Her study offers an in-depth examination of multimodality via the processes, values, structures, and semiotic practices people employ every day to compose and communicate their thoughts. Shipka counters current associations that equate multimodality only with computer, digitized, or screen-mediated texts, which are often self-limiting. She stretches the boundaries of composition to include a hybridization of aural, visual, and written forms. Shipka analyzes the work of current scholars in multimodality and combines this with recent writing theory to create her own teaching framework. Among her methods, Shipka employs process-oriented reflection and a statement of goals and choices to prepare students to compose using various media in ways that spur their rhetorical and material awareness. They are encouraged to produce unusual text forms while also learning to understand the composition process as a whole. Shipka presents several case studies of students working in multimodal composition and explains the strategies, tools, and spaces they employ. She then offers methods to critically assess multimodal writing projects. Toward a Composition Made Whole challenges theorists and compositionists to further investigate communication practices and broaden the scope of writing to include all composing methods. While Shipka views writing as crucial to discourse, she challenges us to always consider the various purposes that writing serves.