Fourth Parallel: Emphasizing Collaboration

Portfolio Contents Home The Background Guiding Questions Portfolios, Technologies, and the Composition Classroom EPortfolios Why Portfolios? Outlining Multimodal Composition The Cs Enhanced Writing   Parallel Educational Tools First Parallel Second Parallel Third Parallel New Directions: Into Infinity (Expanding Ideas) Tangent Line 1 Tangent Line 2 Tangent Line 3 Final Reflections References

When students think of portfolios, they may simply see them as a compilation of their work over the semester. Teachers, on the other hand, might see portfolios as a link between themselves and students (Yancey, 1992; Murphy & Smith, 1999). Teachers should also be wary of helping too much. Otherwise, the portfolio can become too collaborative and student voices end up censured by teachers’ desired outcomes. Many teachers play an active role in the development of student portfolios. As part of the assessment process, teachers comment on various student drafts, which all end up in the portfolio and are meant to help students understand the scaffolding work the portfolio does. Commenting is one way teachers have direct, collaborative power on student work (Faigley, 1989; Kynard, 2006; Phelps, 1989; Zebroski, 1989). Also, when implementing and designing portfolios, in order for portfolios to be contextualized, a negotiation between instructors and students must take place. Such a negotiation occurs when instructors’ take students’ needs seriously and bridge those needs with course objectives (Murphy & Smith, 1999). Although the portfolio also emphasizes collaboration in terms of showcasing collaborative drafts (peer reviews, etc) and collaborative assignments, multimodal assignments lend themselves to collaboration between peers easily (Selfe, 2007). Using new technologies to draft work and create documents gives students an opportunity to show off their skills to other classmates, and to work more naturally with one another. Many writing technologies are also collaborative in nature, so when students find themselves using them in and outside of the classroom, they engage readily with others. When instructors include discussion boards or chatrooms, wikis or blogging as parts of their curriculum and coursework, they ask students to engage in multimodal, collaborative composition. Alberti (2008), Vie (2008), and Lundin (2008) articulate the new ways writing is perceived and how these types of writing are collaborative in nature. The digital native, writing public writes collaboratively (Pagnucci & Mauriello, 2008; Yancey, 2004). The digital divide separating Generation M—the Millennium Generation, which consists of digital natives, or people born after 1980 who are adept with contemporary technologies and have essentially grown up raised on ever-progressing technologies—from older generations stems from the collaborative, social networking digital natives do online that often takes a collaborative form (Vie, 2008). Bringing multimodal assignments into the classroom is something students are familiar with before they even think of stepping foot in a writing class; they are prepared and engaged with collaborative, multimodal writing. Their familiarity and personal engagement allows Generation M students to use multimodal writing collaboratively in ways that are meaningful, interesting, and educational.

jenc1212: hey, rosa, do u remember how you got 2 tht green screen in class? how do i make mine look like that so i can add thse pics n stuff?   XroseXroseX: um, i thnk u just click on that video camera icon, then scroll thru the menu. XroseXroseX: should b in teh list somewhere XroseXroseX: btw, can u help me figure out how to change tht voice feature thing? urs sounded pretty cool w/ teh voice-over. is that what u used? er somthin else? jenc1212: yea, it was voiceover. um, i think there’s an icon for that 2. a lil microphone maybe? hold on n i’ll check it on my comp