Assessing Multimodal Composition

One of the many issues instructors have with incorporating multimodal composition is their ability to assess students compositions. However, once teachers become comfortable grading a website or video they will slowly become accustomed to this kind of assessment. The problem is not that there is not enough to grade or that it is too subjective, but rather, that instructors are simply not used to grading anything but words on a page. If these instructors think back to their first semester teaching, they will likely remember similar feelings that were then directed at writing. The problem of assessing multimodal composition is more a problem of fearing new rather than the actually absence of material to be graded.

 In Sonya Borton and Brian Huot's chapter "Responding and Assessing" they explain: "we have observed that teachers who have learned to design and produce at least one web site are more effective in structuring assignments that help students create and evaluate web texts" (103). This supports my idea that along with comfort, comes effective instruction. If teacher's are able to understand a students struggle, then they will also know how to help this student. Also, the more they create websites or other forms of composition on their own, the easier they will recognize how much students have done to improve their composition. 

When it comes to assessing multimodal composition, teachers will need to accept the fact that they will not be comfortable at first. However, the transition can be made easier if the old way they assess writing is compared to a new way to assess multimodal composition. Things like transitions, theses, and topic sentences are not entirely forgotten. However, they take different forms as navigation, home pages, and titles of pages within the site. We are not forgetting what our field has been teaching for so long, but instead taking what we know and applying it to something new and exciting. This process of change should not be viewed with disdain, but instead with excitement. Now composition teachers are being challenged to apply what we have taught for years to something new. This can be seen as an opportunity to expand our own personal knowledge while expanding the field we hold so dear.