Introduction: The Question of Teaching Composition Online

In the field of composition, the term assessment  has several meanings from evaluating individual students’ writing ability and testing students’ knowledge to determining an instructor’s, a course’s, or a program’s success. This multiplicity of meanings has caused major confusion as to what assessment really signifies; indeed, many composition scholars wrongly assume that the assessment of students’ writing ability is the only factor needed to determine the success of an entire course or program. In contrast, the field of education assigns assessment a much narrower definition where assessment means testing individual students’ ability and knowledge while the broader term evaluation means determining the value or effectiveness of a course, program, or instructor through a systematic investigation. In this case, assessment becomes one tool of many used in a larger-scale evaluation. For this reason, I would prefer to use the term evaluation exclusively; however, because the term assessment is employed much more frequently in composition studies, I will use the terms assessment and evaluation interchangeably from this point on. Unless I state otherwise, both terms refer to course evaluation, not grading or testing.

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