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An Exercise in Absence . . .

1/12/2006



I'd like to share one other set of cautions. In Portfolios in the Writing Classroom, Catherine Lucas identified three that are as relevant for digital portfolios as for print. First, she notes that portfolios can be "weakened by effect," asking "Can . . . [a] spirit of exploration remain central to the use of portfolios as they become more commonplace?" Second is the "failure of research": "The danger here is that those who cling to the illusion that only what can be measured or counted is worth doing will find the effects of portfolios . . . not only resistant to measurement but initially resistant even to definition." Given the scale that digital technology makes possible, her last caution, co-option by large-scale assessment, is perhaps the most prescient. She notes that if we are not careful, portfolios will become merely a new vehicle used to perform the old task, with the result that portfolios will become standardized-with common assignments and restrictive learning conditions. Should this happen, Lucas says, portfolios "will be just as likely as other standardized tests to limit learning by restricting curriculum to what is most easily and economically measured." As I have noted elsewhere, the impulse animating assessment is the impulse animating digital technology: the collection of everything in an effort to measure it all. Such an intersection of impulses, as Lucas notes, tends to the lowest common denominator: how, after all, d'es one measure wisdom?

Although it may sound otherwise, I'm still optimistic about electronic portfolios, and I will be using them-and blogs and altered books and other technologies-in my teaching in the Spring. As I do, I'll work to heed Lucas' cautions, and I'll aim high, actively engaging students, providing questions and opportunities for reflection, and including by design spaces for quiet as well as for interaction.

Kathleen Yancey (kyancey@english.fsu.edu ) directs a graduate program in Rhetoric and Composition at Florida State University and is tri-director of the National Coalition for ePortfolio Research.

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"An Exercise in Absence . . .," Campus Technology, 1/12/2006, http://www.campustechnology.com/article.aspx?aid=40690

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