Speaking to the increasing ways in which student work are remixes and mashups, Delagrange, McCorkle, andBraun (2013) each write of different approaches to understanding the role of invention, collaboration, and assessment when it comes to planning, accessing, and trying to grade works that pull from or are composed of elements from other, commercial and public domain projects. Questioning the use of older, more traditional assessment, methods, each in turn opens up the way works and in turn assessment takes place using the lens of cultural criticism, law management, and rhetorical theory.

THE EVOLVING RUBRIC: AN ASSESSMENT TOOL
Susan H. Delagrange

Delagrange (2013) discusses the ways in which an “evolving” rubric, one created through collaboration with students, can often help discover the ways in which students understand the works they consume and create. Through using agreed-upon categories, Delagrange (2013) write, the assessment for things including things like remixes can become a “living document,” one that “[is] evolving to suit the needs of the class and of the assignment.”

FAIR USE: IT’S NOT JUST FOR LAWYERS ANYMORE
Ben McCorkle

Introducing the Fair Use doctrine and the safeties it inscribes for creators , McCorkle (2013) writes about the challenges of enabling students to create mashups while also navigating the complexities of laws that forbad or curtail how certain elements can be combined in new ways.  Suggesting that evaluative instruments be based in real-world issues, McCorkle (2013) calls for assessment that speaks to these issues and use Fair Use guidelines as a framework for new forms.

REMIXING LEARNING OUTCOMES: REFRAMING PRINT-CENTRIC EXPECTATIONS
Catherine C. Braun

Detailing that the complications that come from asking students to create new media works that include remix aspects, Braun (2013) relates the “the ways that broader institutional and programmatic definitions of writing and assessment might affect assignment design and the assessment of digital projects within individual writing classrooms.” It is not always a matter of student ability (although that is part), often the overriding issue is the institutional assessment itself and how it “values older forms of discourse, thereby discouraging, from a programmatic standpoint,newer forms of composing, which cannot be assessed appropriately using the old criteria.” By including the words and underlining ideas of “revision” and “re-use” in mission statements and college descriptions, writing classrooms, as influenced by such decisions and wording, can works toward a greater inclusion of mashups and associated assessment.

Reference:

McKee, H. A., & DeVoss, D. N. (Eds.). (2013). Digital writing assessment & evaluation.Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State University Press. Retrieved from http://ccdigitalpress.org/dwae.