Student and Teacher Responsibility
As with any class component, teachers must have a strong pedagogical reasoning underlying their work with the LRO.
If teachers decide to use the LRO without critically assessing its value (what it can offer to their classroom and students), it will be seen as just another technological burden added onto the pile of course work.
However, taking the responsibility of explaining the methodology and benefits of the LRO (and of any class component/ assignment) will show students that the LRO is not some arbitrary chore but engages them in reflecting, writing, and associating. In fact, the LRO engages students by "open[ing] a window for the instructor into the author's context and intentions [part A and the observations] by creating within the text [the LRO as a whole and a space] a forum for presenting the purposes of writing, the reasoning behind revisions, and the contextual basis for the student's knowledge [the directions given in the LRO and teacher explanation and integration]" (McIntire-Strasburg). The LRO is wholly about reflection and recursivity and rewards students for such (see note 1). In short, the LRO meets all of the "requirements" of on-line portfolios as defined by McIntire-Strasburg; it merges the new theories of writing and new media with practice and learning.
In general, on-line portfolios must not privilege a finished ideal text but must privilege knowledge, demonstration, and learning by creating an on-line discourse community. Yet, even if the methodology and philosophy of the on-line portfolio are sound, the teacher still has a lot of work to do. If you do not encourage students to view writing as contextual, varied, and ongoing and do not integrate the on-line portfolio into classroom practices, then the promises of new media and the Web, the portfolio's philosophy, and the conceptual shift in writing will be never be realized. Proper explanation, understanding, and integration are necessary to accompany sound philosophy. Thus, it seems that in order to have students truly learn and truly appreciate writing as cognitive and complex (McIntire-Strasburg), sound philosophy, explanation, and integration are necessary.
Note 1: This corresponds to McIntire-Strasburg's claim that "The emphasis is on writing's recursive nature, but students are not rewarded for recursivity or reflection."