Scott Adams pointed to a
Blog Portfolio assignment
Dennis Jerz (associate professor of English) gave his students back in October.
I like it and am recording it here so I can refer to it in the future. He asks for
a collection of your best blog entries, that represent your developing intellectual engagement with the literary works we have studied.
His criteria include:
1. Coverage - Something substantial for
each work they covered in class. Not one or two. Every one. Work throughout the class.
2. Depth - He's not asking for new entries. He just requires that three demonstrate depth and defines depth to include attribution for one's ideas and a little bit of research. It's a 200 level class so he provides some examples of what he means.
3. Interaction - He requires a dialogue - a real dialogue, and allows for (even encourages?) collegial disagreements. Holy smokes! I bet that makes the initial postings more carefully considered. I wonder if that assumption holds any water.
4. Discussions - Hmmm. An interesting requirement to meet. Students need to learn to write in a way to provoke the dialogue - by choosing interesting topics, posing provocative questions, perhaps knowing the audience well?
5. But my favorite by far is "Xenoblogging." I think it's because he is saying to his students "Contribute(!) and make your contributions meaningful."
# Xenoblogging. "Xeno" means "foreign," so xenoblogging (a term that I just coined) means the work that you do that helps other people's weblogs. Your portfolio should include three entries (which may or may not overlap with the ones you have already selected for "Coverage") that demonstrate your willingness to contribute selflessly and generously to the online classroom community. Examples of good xenoblogging:
* The Comment Primo: Be the first to comment on a peer's blog entry; rather than simply say "Nice job!" or "I'm commenting on your blog," launch an intellectual discussion; return to help sustain it.
* The Comment Grande: Write a long, thoughtful comment in a peer's blog entry. Refer to and post the URLs of other discussions and other blog entries that are related.
* The Comment Informative: If your peer makes a general, passing reference to something that you know a lot about, post a comment that offers a detailed explanation. (For example, the in the third comment on a recent blog entry about the history and culture of print, Mike Arnzen mentions three books that offer far more information than my post did.)
* The Link Gracious: If you got an idea for a post by reading something somebody else wrote, give credit where credit is due. (Since a link is so easy to create, it's not good blogging ethics to hide the source of your ideas.) If a good conversation is simmering on someone else's blog -- whether you are heavily involved or not -- post a link to it and invite your own readers to join in.
6. Wildcard - If the students at Mason State are any indication of what students want, this flexibility is crucial. A chance to show the professor something that is meaningful.
This assessment scheme makes a lot of sense to me. The structure of the requirements support an intellectualy rigorous dialogue among students. It's so easy to design a mismatch between what you want to have happen in the classroom and your assessment plan. I'm glad Scott pointed this one out and that Jerz has it posted on a public blog. I'll never teach an American Lit class, but I should be able to use this for inspiration somewhere in my future. Thanks, gentlemen!
