Assessing New Media Thinking

I'm going to admit that I have no expertise whatsoever on this topic, but I have been thinking about it for a couple of days.  Tuesday night, we had a guest speaker who suggested that this area--new media thinking/new century thinking/ 21st century thinking--is so new that there isn't consensus on how to assess it.  I searched around the internet a bit and really couldn't find much.  I'm writing this post as much to ask for information as to share my thoughts on this topic.  I'm certain that someone has written about this and even created a handy rubric, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to know the correct places to look.

If I'm going to be incorporating new media writing and reading into my curriculum usefully, I have to honor its convergence of old and new practices.  My 6 traits rubric, which has served me heroically for years, will no longer do the job, but neither do I want to abandon its principle of assessing thinking in combination with mechanical skill.  In other words, I don't want to "grade" new media works based on how cool I think they are.  I need to be able to recognize with a reasonable degree of accuracy what kind of thinking a student used to create the project.

I skimmed a lengthy report on newmediathinking.org, and brainstormed a list of possible assessment questions.  I can't even attribute these thoughts to the report because I was voraciously multitasking while skimming.   I guess you could  call this post "placeholder thinking."  I'll get back to it--or you will explain it to me, Gentle Reader.

1.  Sequencing:  has the student ordered the information in a way that's appropriate to the form?  (This question gets a little trickier with new media, in my opinion.  We can't just look for block or alternating style in a comparison/contrast essay.)  Should images, text, audio, video be hyperlinked? embedded in a narrative structure? Do links or the visual design show the reader/viewer how to navigate this order, or has the creator constructed a single path?

2.  Clickability:  is the content adequately grounded in/ linked to its larger context? Are the links relevant and useful to the purpose of the communication?  If not hyperlinked, is the project sufficiently interactive in some other way?

3.  Debugging:  is there evidence of recursive thinking?  Has the student anticipated or solved for obstacles of his or her chosen medium?  How have the parameters of the medium shaped and reshaped the project?

4.  Reflection: is there evidence of metacognition?  Is the student able to explain creative choices? defend points of view included or excluded? prioritized content over technique, or clearly supported content with technique?

5.  Cybercitizenship:  has the student showed evidence of respect for intellectual property? attempted to build or enter into an online community around his or her chosen media?  found ways to collaborate? engaged in appropriate code switching? 

Surely, there's more.  But I'm starting to swim around trying to figure out a way to articulate what I have left in my notes, and I can't.  I'd like to see a strand on listening.  Something better on design/ visual thinking.  Articulation and self-expression.  Meaning making.  Convergence.  Numbers 1-5 above are becoming clear to me, but these others I don't grasp yet, especially in a new media context.