The Learning Record Online: Philosophy, 

Responses, and Responsibility

The LRO is an on-line portfolio that allows students to create and review their writing across time and space. In general, the benefits of integrating the LRO and on-line portfolios into composition classes are numerous. As Janice McIntire-Strasburg writes in "The Flash or the Trash: Web Portfolios and Writing Assessment"

The flexibility of on-line or Webpage portfolios offers clear opportunities for students to customize and analyze cross-situational differences in process and use that information to improve their writing across the semester. As an added bonus, it also allows them to view their personal process(es) and fine tune them through varied projects, giving them information that they can apply to situations throughout their writing lives.

The LRO offers the same opportunities; by working with the LRO and its various components, students write and submit drafts of papers, make observations, and analyze/reflect on their learning. In this sense, the LRO is much more than a forum; it is a space that promotes creation, revision, submission, and evaluation. Working from McLuhan's claim, "the medium is the message," the LRO is the message in that its on-line format/medium, structure, and design help shape student perceptions and perspectives as much as audience and other contextual issues. The LRO is a space, a molder, and a forum.

Although the LRO is an on-line portfolio, it has many characteristics which set it apart from other on-line portfolios; the main difference lies in its philosophy and methodology. The LRO bases assessment on self-evaluation, observation, and demonstration of learning.

Several issues arise when basing classroom learning and assessment on self-evaluation, observation, and demonstration, as well as when negotiating this learning and assessment in an on-line format.

This project explores these issues/problems by examining the philosophy and methodology of the LRO, while arguing that teacher and student responsibility and understanding are necessary in working with the LRO; while the design and methodology of the LRO are sound, teachers and students cannot simply add the LRO to their list of assignments but must integrate it into class activities by studying its history, nature (components), and philosophy. If the LRO, its methodology, and philosophy, remain separate from class activities, it will never be seen as anything more than a simple on-line forum for submitting and collecting student work.

Extending this issue to larger pedagogical theories and practices, using technology and new media in the classroom can enhance teaching and learning, but without proper study and understanding, technology, new media, and particularly on-line portfolios, will seem futile, wholly separate, and burdensome. In short, we must fuse the relatively new conceptions of writing and new theories of technology and new media with our classroom practices.  As McIntire-Strasburg writes, "While this conceptual shift [from writing as static and linear to contextual and varied] holds out the promise that both students and instructors will see writing as the complex cognitive activity that it is, and respect it as such, traditional methods for teaching the process of writing (and assessing it) have lagged behind in delivering on that promise." On-line portfolios, and particularly the LRO, meet the challenges that the conceptual shift in writing and its merger with new media offer, by allowing for (with proper understanding and integration) personal growth, self-evaluation, and development on individual assignments and across the time and space of the course and its activities.

To show how the LRO delivers on the above conceptual promise, I will first provide a summary of the philosophy and methodology of the portfolio model. Next, I will explore the history and philosophy of the LRO—how it is similar and different—then examine student and teacher responses to/problems with the LRO. Finally, I will synthesize the LRO components, philosophy, and responses, while arguing that teachers and students must understand the LRO philosophy and properly integrate it into their practices in order to truly work with and benefit from the LRO.

My goal is not to defend the LRO, for I feel there is no reason to; instead, I want to explain the LRO and the philosophies behind it, to explore and explain teacher and students responses, and to offer a negotiation between student/teacher concerns and the philosophy and practices that the LRO encourages and shapes. In general, I hope to expand (or at least join) the larger theoretical debate on writing and new media by claiming that with most on-line writing portfolios, problems/negative responses derive from problems with the methodology, conceptual framework, and philosophy and from lack of teacher and student understanding and integration. As McIntire-Strasburg argues throughout her article, teachers still push writing as ultimately achieving a finished ideal text. In contrast, the LRO "encourag[es] writing as learning — writing to create and not merely disseminate knowledge — [and . . .]  transcend[s] the reductive nature of a 'final' product while in the act of creating one" (McIntire-Strasburg).