Assessing Visual Rhetoric- Problems, Practices and Possible Solutions

The proliferation of computers in classrooms allows students to insert images, texts, graphics, movies, and audio files easily into their electronic works or documents. There is a sense that our culture is a visual culture, but what does that mean in terms of assessment practice? What do we really value about images? What is the relationship between images and texts? This study examines the problems of assessment within a university level first year composition course. The analysis relies on a traditional grounded methods approach and a concept mapping approach to mutually inform the results and conclusions. The aim of the study is to uncover the actual criteria and standards valued by instructors when confronted with the complexity of the new media compositions. The study is designed to be of interest to educational professionals from administration with interests in assessment theory and practice to classroom instructors of any field whose students are now submitting electronic compositions with texts and images.