There's a certain subjective element. It's sometimes difficult to explain to students why a particular image or website or Flash movie is better than another, aesthetically speaking. You know one is better than the other, and probably the student knows it as well, but it's difficult to put into words. I know that assessing writing can also be subjective, but I feel like I have a better grasp of how to explain that kind of subjective judgment.

Some students do not such great work, but are clearly excited by their final products. It is very difficult to be critical in these cases. I give a lot of B's.

trying to overlook the high level of technical skill that some students come in with. eg: those that know photoshop can whip something fabuluous up really quickly, while those just learning the program have a hard time getting much of anything spectacular done.

To balance the gap that may exist between folks who already knew how to manage certain digital applications and those who didn't.

Balancing the role of affect in the composition. Because I'm so heavily trained in the structures of _print_, it's hard to think critically about the emotive structures that electracy values. In other words, appropriately weighing "flashiness".

So many components go into each work that students can excel in one time consuming and difficult area while failing in another and not meeting the base requirements. For instance, if a student made a brilliant designed, accessible, visually and coding strong website, but had flawed text. Luckily, my department caps writing classes at 25, and many of the multimodal classes are listed as film classes so we have an additional 3 hour per week 'screening' time that can be spent learning the technology. This is a rather ideal situation and assessment would be much more difficult if the classes did not have the extra time to cover all of the needed components. It's also sometimes difficult to stress that everything goes into the work - not just the visual layout or the writing - all of the components are weighted equally, and so sometimes students over-focus on one area. I encourage revisions, so assessment isn't a closed condition, but that means that assessment becomes much more time consuming with student workshops and conferences.

When to involve peers...so as not to embarrass students who are struggling to use the software in creative ways. I want to use peers at beginning and middle stages of composition so I don't have to make aesthetic judgments (or any other kind) but students can see each other's work and adjust their work. I see a lot of students (especially in fyc classes) simply not caring that their new media compositions are good.

My own naivete and uncertainty about what I want the end product to be.

getting students to see that differential learning across the class is important part of production: not everyone will leave experts in all things.

Recognizing that students' works, particularly in jam-packed semester will not be polished necessarily. That in learning the technology and then analyzing and creating with it, students can only revise so much, so often have to look into potential of piece--what student designed/hoped for and how close s/he came to realizing those rhetorical choices.

Students can do an astounding amount of work and still have both a failed project (doesn't "work," fails rhetorically) and lack of insight about the process. That's why engagement throughout and an astute final reflection play so heavily for me, but this is diffucult to communicate to students.

Since I refuse to grade these projects, I would say that the hardest part is articulating appropriate criteria so that students have some sense of how they are doing.

At times I find that students will spend more time on appearances than content.

Trying to objectify the subjective aesthetic elements of NM works. An artistic project might not be the most communicative, and vice versa. How to weight these factors?

Knowing what to ignore is most difficult. For example, when I look at prose, I know concentrating on surface errors is wrong-headed pedagogy. But, when I look at media compositions, what is the correlation to surface errors? Hyperlinks that don't work, images that are formatted incorrectly or cropped ineffectively, skewed alignment, poor navigation, or poor scene editing are surface problems, but they can all impede reading/viewing the compositions. It's hard to identify which aspects of the project represent technical flaws (problems in performance or execution) and which represent rhetorical insensitivities (problems of judgment or approach), and the latter is what I want to spend my time teaching.

The gaps that can occur between conceptualization and execution. Sometimes a piece can be conceptually amazing but, on the techncial level, only demonstrate glimpses of its potential. Conversely, other compositions can be techncially gorgeous yet thematically flat. The diversity among student projects is exciting and often a strength of multimodal pedagogies. But, it also presents challenges for assessment.

separating aesthetics from rhetorical effect. Also, evaluting incomplete projects since students are nearly always complete beginniners w/ new media.

I am less experienced with multimodal composition than I am with traditional print-based composition. Therefore, I tend to struggle with my own insecurities more. However, this is also a strength because I approach students' multimodal projects less authoritatively than I do their projects framed more conventionally.

Difference between a message that works and a student's own learning in creating the message. Often means that two grades are created--a participation grade for learning about how to get the message across and a grade for the communication itself. Some times a message appears more complex than it is because the student has worked more on the technological than the message itself and that creates an additional complexity for assessment.

Responding to different media/elements in a meaningful way that students can access and interpret.

Like in traditional comp classes, assessing media compositions requires sometimes making accomodations for individual students. Making these while maintaining a level of fairness for all students is difficult.

students often equate time and work (effort) with quality, and it is sometimes difficult to "stick to the criteria" when grading these very time-consuming projects. also, the nature of media compositions sometimes facilitates a denial of work such that students forget that they are being graded on x when they're producing something else.

assessing students initial ability to be able to chart progress.

Because students work with a variety of tools to create multimodal compositions, the most difficult aspect is to construct grading practices that are sufficiently standardized, while at the same time tailored to address the work of specific students adequately.

Balancing the compensation for product and process.

Assessing work that doesn't have an established form within academia as the traditional research paper does and for which expectations are more flexible

None that differs from other assessments

They are new to me as a teacher. I have been teaching for 17 years, and I often feel like a new TA.

The same aspects that are difficult with assessing any composition.

Compositionists are unaccustomed to making consistent, clear judgments on effectiveness once "texts" move beyond writing (and even by itself, written text is a challenge to evaluate). Partly this comes from a lack of criteria for understanding the impact and effectiveness of multimedia texts.

It's so new, students don't know what to think or what's expected, exactly, until after they have gone through the experience once.

Figuring out how to grade fairly when students come in with such different levels of skill. I want students to use my course as an opportunity to learn new skills, so I welcome students with no technological experience, but it's hard not to be more impressed by the student who comes in with Flash skills, for example, and can whip together a savvy argument that works rhetoricaly and technologically.

The differing entry-level skills that different students possess. Playing field is never level since some have high end tech. skills and other have never created used any of the new media technology.

The tension between audience needs and experimentation (or the writer's need to play).

Wide variety of student's technical abilities and design/artistic sensibilities.

Really, new media compositions are no more difficult to evalutate than a traditional paper when an instructor keeps in mind what message the student is trying to convey and in what context that message is to be presented. I know there is a lot of angst about this in RCPC as a whole, but really I find much of this confusion can be attributed to "missing the forest for the trees" :)

dealing with work that is clearly unfinished or still in process but demonstrates student thought and effort in working with unfamiliar technology and theories

Assessing the student's understanding of the choices he/she made (whether the choices were conscious or not) and their impact on the way the message is communicated.

Althought the writing center doesn't assess, we help students do self-assessments using whatever we can gather about the rubrics the instructors provide. The most difficult aspect of this is that instructors are often unclear about what they want or about the rhetorical purpose and situation. Often we get assignments that are framed along the lines of "make sure you have at least one graphic, one link, and some text."

The rhetorical situation of these assignments is often slippery, and I need that as a ground. Also, there are so many possiblities that it's a tougher call as to how well a given combination worked. And of course the conventions aren't established. The usability-tested tech com interface is perfect for some, and the hypertextual circuitous arrangement for others. In theory, the rhetorical situation governs this, but practice for this kind of composition hasn't caught up with theory yet: just mho.