With the continued development of the Internet, distance learning initiatives and Web-based mechanisms designed to support traditional classroom pedagogies are here to stay, and traditional notions of teaching are forever changed. Online colleges and universities like the University of Phoenix already boast burgeoning enrollments, as students flock to a curriculum that will gladly meet them on their own terms and in their own homes and offices. On the Web, teaching moves from brick and mortar classrooms with thirty students entering and leaving every hour, on the hour, to a compendium of synchronous and asynchronous experiences characterized by bulletin board posts, downloads, real-time chats, file transfers, and video and audio files.
lack of human contact: With technology-delivered assessments,
meaningful human contact and intervention to assist with test score
interpretation may be lacking or unavailable. A skilled counselor can
help a test taker to sort out his or her results and use them in the
context of other knowledge and experiences. (3)
Gauging the Value of Online Grade Posting: An Inquiry into Full Disclosure
Web-based approaches to teaching writing and rhetoric are, generally speaking, multivalent, offering new and important capacities that surpass some of the dimensional and practical constraints of the traditional written page. Moreover, many of the practices common in Web-based pedagogy are well supported by theories of dialogism and negotiated learning, and those in the computers and composition community have long trumpeted these benefits.
At the same time, however, online educational efforts rise in the long wake of the modernist narrative of production and efficiency, a narrative that has fostered the growth of technology to its present state, but one that has been called into question by postmodernists like Jean-Francois Lyotard, as well as members of both the technical communication community (Blyler, Katz, Selber) and the computers and writing community (Selfe and Selfe) because the questions and motivations sustaining the technology narrative throughout history have dealt, in large part, with production and efficiency, often at the expense of more humane interests and consequences. Questions about efficiency, production, and human error often dominate
discussions of technology at the expense of other important questions about
the effects of technology use on humans, including the way technology
affects human communication. How can we do things more quickly? How can we make more of them? How can we more easily distribute? What mechanisms can we create and put into place in order to facilitate and increase production? How can we reduce human error?
Fortunately, a portion of those in the business of teaching, especially those teaching writing, have been able to manipulate effectively new electronic and Web-based technologies for what are ostensibly or at least purportedly "humane purposes" – with one of those purposes being to
engage teachers and students in conversation with one another in the
interest of improving literacies and skills. Indeed, fighting instrumental rationality and unreflective automation in ill-conceived electronic writing instruction has been a central focus of many in computers and writing (see Selfe and Selfe above, for example) who have discussed at great length the political nature of interface and Web design, considering issues of power and gender as central to any discussion of teaching writing in electronic environments.
What I wish to consider here, however, is an often overlooked area of some concern that affects many writing courses as they are moved either wholly, or in part, to an online environment without face-to-face interaction between teacher and students: an online environment that substantially changes the
amount and kind of face-to-face interaction between teacher. It seems that in a Web-based writing environment, we can, at least in large part, efficaciously comment on student writing, a vital part of grading. Indeed, in a sense, we could see the electronic space as a convenient site of invention when it comes to manipulation of text and the invention of responses to student work, not to mention the technological advantages that accrue when we are able to link specific comments, chart patterns of error, and manipulate text to illustrate effective writing practices. But what about the actual delivery of actual grades? Percentages and letters, 82%'s and C's? We might well be able to assess or evaluate online student work and supply qualitative feedback, but what about that moment at which the teacher must face the age-old dilemma of quantification, of locating quality on an alphabetical or numerical scale? Several questions arise, including 1) How does online delivery change the context and rhetorical dynamic between teacher and student when this type of information is being communicated in an oftentimes asynchronous, distant, electronic context? 2) What is it like, from a student's perspective, to go to the Web at midnight and find his or her essay with a grade assigned to it outside of the traditional classroom context and its supports? Is there any difference? If there is one, is it important?
I do not have answers to most of these questions, but I do believe that they and the issues related to them are worthy of attention. As rhetoricians, we are constantly monitoring signification practices, and assessment scholars like Kathleen Blake Yancey, Brian Huot, and Peter Elbow have, for years, worked to formulate not only more effective ways to evaluate written work but more effective ways to communicate such evaluation and negotiate evaluation with students in a pedagogically productive manner. Communicating grades via the Web brings with it its own set of concerns and problems, though, and delivery of grade information is one of them. Delivery as a rhetorical canon has, in large part, been ignored in contemporary discussions of rhetoric, as print media seemed to nullify the importance of teaching students what has been seen as a holdover from oral culture. There are reasons to challenge this approach, though, and a consideration of how grades are delivered online is only one relevant example. A closer look at online grade delivery in one Web-based writing environment suggests just how significant delivery can be, especially in an asynchronous online environment.
As a means of approaching this issue, I wish to consider one local (for me) example of a Web-based writing environment, noting well its success in several pedagogical areas, but then close with some questions about grade distribution in an online environment, particularly an asynchronous online environment.
During the past three years, TOPIC, the Texas Tech Online/Print Integrated Curriculum, has become the focal point of the Tech composition program. Indeed, many in the computers and writing community have seen faculty and graduate student presentations illustrating TOPIC capabilities at recent Computers and Writing Conferences. This is a Web site that supports and facilitates use of the course textbook in freshman composition courses (TOPIC has also been used in various technical communication courses and literature courses at both the undergraduate and graduate level). Designed primarily to provide Web support for traditional classroom
teaching, TOPIC enhances composition courses by enabling students to
participate in a variety of tasks and course-related activities while
online. Students are able to quickly and easily access syllabi and assignments, post drafts, critique each other's work, submit journal entries, post email messages, and, importantly, check their grades as their work is evaluated. As the teacher assesses and assigns grades to their posted online essays and other assignments, students can quickly go to the Web to find out how they have done and how any assignment grade has impacted their overall course grade. As designed, grades are automatically configured to show overall performance, too, at that point in the course. In general, TOPIC facilitates most desired writing activities in that it effectively supports the type of interaction and access that many involved with computers and writing have come either to expect or envision with regard to computer-based instruction. Moreover, from a teacher's perspective, TOPIC is extremely useful in the organization and management of course materials, students, and student work.
What makes TOPIC particularly attractive to teachers at Texas Tech is that it supports a social-epistemic theory of writing that encourages student-sponsored learning and a communal creation of knowledge. From a liberatory pedagogical perspective, TOPIC, like some other online teaching environments, also helps students take control of their own learning. They are able to access information, post work, get assignments, and link to other online resources. Further supporting this liberatory angle is the immediate access to grades that TOPIC affords. Students can get their up-to-date cumulative course grade any time, in addition to individual assignment grades, comments, and class standing.
This grade availability and immediate distribution (teacher grades; the teacher posts the grades, and students can access immediately wherever they can access the Web) together constitute what I will call a "full disclosure" of grades. The TOPIC site provides but one instance of this type of information publication; other Web-based educational settings perform somewhat similarly when grade distribution is part of the information delivery mission of the instructional site. Indeed, when classes are done entirely via distance and without face-to-face teacher/student interaction, there seems to be little choice other than such disclosure. But what are the shortcomings/potential dangers of "full disclosure" in an asynchronous electronic environment, be it as part of a distance course or within the context of a hybrid course merging Web technology with traditional pedagogical practice? Relatedly, how does the very different electronic context of the Web shape delivery, for instance, in the way in which grades are distributed by teachers and, more importantly, received by students? What is a "humane" context for grade delivery? What supports do we or should we provide in delivering grade information – online or face-to-face? All of these questions, it seems, have to do with use: how do we wish to use grades in writing courses?
On one hand, any questions surrounding "full disclosure" seem largely indefensible, unethical, or, perhaps, even "un-American." These are the college students' grades, not ours, ultimately, and sites and programs like TOPIC and others that facilitate online grade calculation and distribution are something of an ideal in that the gradebook becomes visible, rather than a mystery, to the student. With such access come all the pedagogical advantages that accrue when a student has a sense of standing and place in a class context. Many, if not most, of us believe – even in our more cynical moments – that grades as rhetorical signifiers, can motivate or at least have the potential to motivate students to act or respond in certain ways; from a pragmatic perspective, the
potential consequences of grading might, at least in many cases, be
desirable. This is the reason we calculate midterm grades at the collegiate level and send out progress reports in grade school and secondary school. It is an enduring belief in the academy that knowing what one's grade is (and, thus, knowing where one "stands" according to a scale of worth or against one's peers) will change negative behaviors or sustain positive ones. When we send out a midterm grade of "A" to a student, we hope that student will continue to do so well. On the other hand, when we submit a grade of "F" for a student, we hope even more fervently that he or she will see it as a call to some sort of action. In either instance, though, we see the signifier calling clearly for the student to either sustain or change study habits, effort, motivation, interest, etc. In theory, this works, although the results are not always so favorable.
But can "full disclosure" – the constant and immediate online availability of grades – foster the opposite view? Can grade delivery, depending on how it is done, have potentially damaging pedagogical effects? While teachers certainly have no right to withhold grade information, might they have any right under any circumstance to more cautiously and deliberately communicate it, to mete out grade information in a more contextually-rich, rhetorically and pedagogically supportive environment? Admittedly, these questions feel problematic. Again, as teachers and citizens, many of us have a visceral response to anything that could be perceived as a threat to free access. We typically disagree with censorship and information
restriction in any form. Even though grades might be used pedagogically and rhetorically, we tend to chafe at the idea of information that should be public domain or that pertains to citizens' sympathies being used "rhetorically" by someone in a position of power. But as teachers, I wonder whether or not we can agree that there might be a valid or ethical reason not to reveal everything right away, right on time. Can/should we "play with some of the cards still turned over" in the interest of adding a pedagogically productive tension to the grade distribution, not to mention give ourselves time to fully come to terms with the grades at which we ourselves arrive? Indeed, the question might better be phrased, "Can/should we use our judgment to determine when, where, and how is best for us to turn those cards over?" Are some times and spaces – electronic or face-to-face – more conducive to grade dissemination than others? And if they are, can/should we seek out those times and spaces?
One way to indirectly approach these questions is to think about grading, which includes the delivery and receipt of grading signifiers, as a dialogue between teacher and student. To engage this view further, we can look to discourse theory and, more specifically, to the concept of "adjacency pairs" and the way speakers "maintain" their discourse in a conversational framework. According to Jonathan Potter and Margaret Wetherell, adjacency pairs are fundamental to the "turn-taking" dynamic central to discourse theory. They play an important role in that they supply the logical undergirding to conversational dialogue. They are a congruent "matching" of two utterances, one by the first interlocutor, one by the second. What this means is that one person speaks, and his or her counterpart responds in kind. For example, if one speaker asks her counterpart what his favorite Bruce Springsteen album is, he must select a response from Springsteen's body of work in order to preserve the logical integrity of the conversation. He could not say "pizza" or "aborigine" to successfully complete this particular adjacency pair, nor could he name an Elton John or Radiohead album. Responding in such a manner would result in puzzlement because the answer is not on the horizon of possibility for acceptable answers to the question.
His "correct" or acceptable response indicates a compatibility with the first speaker's "preference structure," which is the field of desirable answers closely related to the initial question. Had the second speaker named a Bruce Springsteen song instead of an album, or, perhaps, another artist's album, it is likely that the first speaker would seek to clarify the original question/prompt in order to elicit a "better" or more compatible response and thus maximize the sense of congruency in the adjacency pair – to match it with her preference structure. Interlocutors, then, seek to `maintain' the conversation in order to
maintain its coherence and integrity. In this example, the conversation
initiator narrows the field by. In other words, she guides her conversation partner to respond in a way that logically nurtures and sustains the conversation.
This idea of conversational "maintenance" in order to condition responses can be useful as we turn our attention back to online grade availability, keeping in mind the ways in which grades can be distributed and negotiated dialogically in a traditional, face-to-face classroom setting. The way we as teachers would like our students to respond to grade reports is, generally speaking, with a newfound sense of accountability; to complete the adjacency pair, we would like them to raise questions like: "Where can I go for help with my writing?" or "What can I do to write better?" Obviously, this does not always happen in any grade delivery context.
However, when grades are not communicated in a face-to-face context and instead are posted asynchronously and electronically as a percentage or letter grade, accompanied by static comments in a best case scenario, the opportunity for immediate and efficacious conversation "maintenance" can be limited – the grade has a feeling of fixedness, of being already decided, added to the average and backed by the legitimating force of technology. Janet E. Wall, Assistant Vice President of ACT-Educational Technology Center in Hunt Valley, Maryland, cautions those using technology to support assessment and delivery of assessment information to be particularly aware of the following:
reporting and interpretation: Immediate feedback on tests is clearly
desirable. Without appropriate interpretation, however, there is danger
that the test taker will take actions that are not warranted by the
test results. The potential exists for interpretations to appear to be
so definitive that test takers fail to understand the need for caution
due to the lack of accuracy of the scores. Also, feedback can be so
extensive that the test results can paralyze a person's actions.
While Wall's professional context and emphasis here suggest concern primarily with exam scores (particularly college admission exam scores), her paper frames the issue of technologically-driven assessment and delivery in more general terms, acknowledging that in online grade delivery the kairotic moment qualitatively changes from that of face-to-face delivery in which students can typically interpret grading signifiers and, if necessary, immediately engage teachers in the conversation maintenance necessary to understand and act. Students often need "intervention" to accurately "interpret" grades, as Wall notes. The lack of semantic support at this moment of delivery and receipt can open the door to confusion, anger, or a sense of hopelessness.
One obvious response to this is that email provides one adequate way to communicate and clarify comments and grades – to condition responses and reduce resentment or confusion. Indeed, the asynchronous nature of this communication, on one hand, seems preferable in that it gives students a chance to "cool off" – to have some distance from the teacher while attempting to interpret the grade.
Yet at the same time, I might suggest that the immediacy of "face-to-face" grade disclosure can potentially provide a richer space than can most Web-based grade delivery mechanisms and/or email for immediate feedback and encouragement that helps teachers nurture and condition this critical "adjacency pair" – the call and response that is 1) the teacher articulation of a grade and 2) the student reaction, which in our preference structure is either the recognition of the need to sustain a behavior or change a behavior depending on the grade. In my experience, students seem less likely to take the time to speak with me about grades they receive online; they do not often contest them or ask questions to help them clarify or interpret; rather, if I do receive feedback about grading practices, it usually comes in end-of-the-semester course evaluations, at which time there is little I can do to help a student who has questions about his or her grade. And again, I cite a sense of technological determinism motivating both the students' and my own attitudes. Students, on one hand, are more inclined to think that the grade is "finished" and not up for negotiation; it is effectively folded into the running total that is their cumulative grade. "The computer says so!" On the other hand, I am often seduced by the perceived cleanliness of the system: I read, comment, and assign a grade, giving me the sense that my work is done. And while this cannot be blamed on the system of delivery itself, I find myself less likely to have the "state of the nation (class)" discussion that so frequently follows the return of student papers in the traditional classroom setting, the conversations that authorize the preference structure and maintenance I discuss here: open, frank discussion of grades and what they mean.
We need to be aware, too, of how we are using the valuable data that can be made available via computer-driven automation. For example, does a student's ability to access class standing, another feature of some Web-based delivery systems, and compare his or her grades to others, even anonymously, necessarily foster a healthy learning dynamic, especially when communication and conversation "maintenance" with the teacher is not immediately available? One student in a recent writing course stayed after class one day midway through the term to engage me in hostile conversation after she recognized, while outside of class, that her grade, an 88%, was the highest in the class and that 1) she needed an A to keep her scholarship and 2) that it was unfair for there to be no A's in the class. (It should be noted that in TOPIC, the instructor can choose to allow or disallow student access to class standing.) While on one hand she could be seen as having a point about the class grade distribution, I felt a bit uncomfortable having to explain a situation that would resolve itself by the end of the term and one I would not have needed to address had she not known where everyone else stood in the class. In other words, while having up-to-the-minute access to updated grades and overall class standing can increase student vigilance and motivation (not to mention make the teacher's grading practices more public in productive ways), it can also fuel the fire of grade obsession and competition. This oftentimes hinders learning by replacing a longitudinal approach to a course grade and the work remaining with an obsessive concern with class standing and current average, instant gratification, which can limit students' ability to appreciate and engage in the processes needed for long-term development and improvement. Not being able to help students interpret grade data, then, can force the writing teacher out of the role of coach and into the role of apologist.
All of this points, really, to a critique of grading that goes beyond a quibble with online grade posting and extends to any kind of grade posting or disclosure that can make it difficult for teachers and students to immediately engage in a dialogue, if necessary, to come to a shared meaning of what grades as signifiers mean in context and at the point of delivery. This raises larger questions still about whether or not we want to encourage dialogue about assessment with our students. I believe we should.
Scholarship on assessment points to the need to use grades (which are recognized as always/already problematic) as an integral part of writing pedagogy. My sense is that in order to effectively use grades in our pedagogy, we need to communicate grades in an environment in which we share immediate proximity with students, even if that means immediate proximity in a synchronous electronic environment. For instance, perhaps future developments in courseware will emphasize links between chat features and grade delivery. Communicating grades involves a host of rhetorical cues – tone of voice, gestures, posture, and inflections – that either encourage or discourage writers, that prompt them to use information in certain ways. In online environments, we need to think carefully about what we want grades to do in our pedagogy and how we can make the technology support a practice that complements our theory. There is a distinct rhetorical exigency in that moment of communication when a teacher returns a graded essay to a student, and the student reads and assesses the grade before taking a "turn" and completing the adjacency pair in this dialogue by responding to the grade in either speech or action. And it is important that we be there to support and maintain the student's reading, interpretation, and response in order to make it pedagogically and rhetorically effective and important. We need, too, to decide if electronic spaces, especially asynchronous spaces, can fully support this negotiation and, if so, how. Computers, and especially the Web, have significantly changed the scope of assessment and information distribution. We have an obligation to our students to proceed ethically and to use all of the rich communication capacities available – both old and new.
Works Cited
Elbow, Peter. Embracing Contraries: Trustworthiness in Evaluation. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986.
Huot, Brian A. "Computers and Assessment: Understanding Two Technologies." Computers and Composition 13.2 (1996): 231-43.
Katz, Stephen B. "The Ethic of Expediency: Classical Rhetoric, Technology, and the Holocaust." College English 54.3 (1992): 255-75.
Potter, Jonathan and Margaret Wetherell. Discourse and Social Psychology: Beyond Attitudes and Behaviour. London: Sage, 1987.
Selber, Stuart. "Hypertext Spheres of Influence in Technical Communication Instructional Contexts." Computers and Technical Communication: Pedagogical and Programmatic Perspectives. Greenwich, CT: Ablex, 1997. 17-43.
Selfe, Cynthia L. and Richard J., Jr. "The Politics of the Interface: Power and Its Exercise in Electronic Contact Zones." College Composition and Communication 45.4 (1994): 480-504.
Wall, Janet E. "Technology-Delivered Assessment: Diamonds or Rocks?" February 2000.
ERIC/CASS Digest. Texas Tech University. U.S. North Carolina.
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Yancey, Kathleen Blake and Brian Huot. "Construction, Deconstruction, and (Over) Determination: A Foucaultian Analysis of Grades." The Theory and Practice of Grading Writing: Problems and Possibilities. Eds. Frances Zak and Christopher C. Weaver. Albany, NY: SUNY P, 1998. 39-52.
vol. 6 Iss. 2 Fall 2001