Our core reading for this week, McKenna and McAvina (2011), argues that while digital writing is a regular part of communication online (discussion board posts, emails and the like), it has tended to keep the linear, conventional expression of knowledge. The authors draw on Goodfellow and Lea’s (2007) point that ‘many digital texts occupy new ‘sites’ of writing production but they do not represent fundamentally different writing practices’.

However, there are some forms of digital writing that challenge this linear, traditional approach. You might remember a reading from ‘Introduction to Digital Environments’ by George Landow (2006) on hypertext. Landow (2006) argues that creates a new way for readers to engage with the text, one where the text becomes ‘part of a network of navigable relations’, encouraging critical thinking by evaluating and making connections between the different ideas. Landow says hypertext opens up the kind of ‘multisequential’ reading that is more like what academics actually do – venturing beyond the text to read footnotes, follow up references, gather other sources, and so on. Importantly, also, in creating hypertext, students engage in new genres and new forms of writing. Landow (2006) notes the use of juxtaposition and comparison in hypertext writing, ‘one of which involves joining what one might consider academic and so-called creative writing’ (p. 304). This kind of writing has implications for the reader and, since we’re thinking about online assessment, the assessor, as the meaning behind links, juxtapositions and the connections being made are no longer laid out for the reader and instead depend on a more interpretative act in reading.

And, of course, digital work extends well beyond text. Gunther Kress (2005) talks about the idea of ‘reading as design’. He compares reading a prospectus to that of reading his institution’s website home page:

The traditional page had one entry point—though being so naturalized by centuries-long convention, it was not even noticeable as a feature. It was an entry point given by convention and used by the author (and the readers), who, remember, knew about the world of the audience. Access to the power of authorship was strictly governed. Here, on the webpage, the presence of thirteen entry points speaks of a very different principle: the author(s) of this page clearly have in mind that visitors will come to this page from quite different cultural and social spaces, in differing ways, and with differing interests, not necessarily known to or knowable by the maker(s) of the page. There is no pregiven, no clearly discernible reading path, either of the home page or of each individual page, or of the site as a whole (the issue of navigation, where maps are relatively unreliable). The existence of the different entry points speaks of a sense of insecurity about the visitors, a feeling of fragmentation of the audience—who now are no longer just readers but visitors, a quite different action being implied in the change of name. (Kress, 2005).

Kress (2005) argues that ‘Sequence has effects for authorship and for reading’, as the audience depends on the unfolding of the argument. In images, space works differently and all the elements of an argument are presented simultaneously. In a case like his institution webpage, the reader must find their own path through the material, based on their own subjective decisions on what to prioritise. He suggests that the combination of image and text on a screen are dominated by the logic of the image (seeing the whole first) and thus the interest of the reader, not the author, is dominant. In other, three dimensional works, perhaps this emphasis on the interpretative act of the reader/assessor (as arguably, any act of reading is an act of assessment) is even more explicit as we have the embodied experience of moving in and through the work we are attempting to assess.

So, with these thoughts about how digital writing can both transform our practice and our understanding of what constitutes writing and reading, we turn to this week’s theme of ‘assessment as a creative crisis’. Do new forms of academic writing, like hypertext, challenge our ideas of what constitute academic discourse? And if so, what are the implications for assessing such works?

Perhaps the subjectivity of the assessor is not new – undoubtably our Arts colleagues will see these dilemmas as more common than we might – but they do bring to the forefront something that is always implicit in assessment and that is the subjectivities that we, as assessors, bring to the work. In our Manifesto for Teaching Online (2012)*, Ross, Bayne, Macleod and O’Shea have suggested that ‘Assessment is a creative crisis as much as it is a statement of knowledge’ as it brings that subjectivity to the fore. (Indeed, the Manifesto itself acts as a useful example of a recent work that challenges what constitutes academic discourse – so for those who would like to, do check it out at http://onlineteachingmanifesto.wordpress.com. It also offers a few other statements around assessment that might inform your approach to this week’s theme.)

Multimodality within evolving scholarship (from draft lit review)
The focus on how hypertext essays, visually-rich artefacts and other emerging forms of composition are different from their proposed essayistic predecessors is simultaneously helpful and misleading. They are valuable in encouraging us to reflect on the dynamic nature of literacy and communication within the academy, however they offer a false impression of the historical and contemporary ubiquitousness of the traditional essay. If we walk the corridors of the university and peer into the laboratories, performance spaces and tutorial rooms we will observe students of music, drama, mathematics, physical sciences and other disciplines participating in assessment exercises where ideas, knowledge and ability are already being demonstrated without calling for the power of the written word (or to a much lesser extent than we might understand from some of the literature). We evidently need to avoid framing multimodality in term of how it differs from an essayistic approach when the written word is by no means ubiquitous as the sole means of representation within the academy. Or to put it another, multimodality cannot be seen to deprivelige the essay in disciplines where it does not already hold sway.

In his influential study of the relationship between orality and literacy, Ong (1982) describes how the roots of academic tradition within western civilization saw Greek scholars listen to speeches before going on to study the transcripts of what had been said. Elsewhere [bit here oral assessment being the original method of testing in the university].

The comparisons between digital and traditional approaches to composition can also be seen as misleading as they encourage us to think in terms of new and old media, with the advent of digital communication technology as a threshold point that represents the birth of multimodality. Just as discourse surrounding multimodality is heavily influenced by work published in the pre-digital era, including Halliday’s work on semiotics (1978,1985) and Gibson’s work on affordances (1977), the representation of ideas across modes pre-dates the digital era. Jewitt (2006) makes a vital point when she reminds us that although the multimodal label may be a contemporary creation, print-based reading and writing have always been multimodal and instead invites us to see multimodality as blending new and old technologies (2005). Once again, Ong’s work on the history of scholarship and literacy is valuable in demonstrating that books and images – what we might describe as pre-digital multimodal artefacts – have formed the basis for education and learning for centuries (citation). More recently, in their comparison of pre- and post-digital science textbooks, Bezemer and Kress (2008) recognise that the use of image alongside explanatory written text is a tradition that pre-dates current discussion of multimodality.

Once again there is value in applying these ideas to assessment practices taking place within the academy. If we continue our walk through the university we might visit the art school or design studio where we can observe an Intermedia student using a communicative collage of orality, visuality and body language to present her ideas within the ‘crit review’ exercise. The simultaneous representation of ideas across a range of modes predates the digital era and need not be the product of digital communication.

Scolari (2009) adds to this discussion by question the efficacy of regular references to ‘new media’ within the literature. In his work on mapping conversations about digital media, he suggests that ‘new media’ can only ever be a relative term, and asks at which point we should refer to a weblog as ‘old media’? Clearly, the written word has never been the sole mode that matters within the academy and we need to avoid thinking in terms of old and new modes. Rather than conceptualitising digital multimodality as causing a seismic shift in literacy that destabilises written language, we should see it as the continuing evolution of how ideas and knowledge are communicated within the academy.