Green Squiggly Lines: Evaluating Student Writing in Computer-Mediated Environments

This report performs/traces the difficulties and adaptations faced as writing (and writing assessment) become electronic. When electronic publication comes into the college writing classroom in the form of electronic portfolios what happens?

We have a theory, a trace, a prediction of what will happen in the influence that word processors have had on student writing. By outlining a history of word processors in writing pedagogy and assessment (a vast increase in studies of and pedagogies advocating revision occurred in the 1980s), "Green Squiglly (sic) Lines" sketches the potential impact of electronic portfolios on writing assessment. How will the publication--the turning of academic essays into (pre)professional documents [literally portfolios in the graphic artist sense of the word]--change writing assessment in American higher education? More