A compilation of the work you've contributed to the online discussion so far. You should have contributed at least *something* and interacted meaningfully with your peers for every text we have discussed in the course, and that you did at least some of this interaction *before* the daily class discussion period. Your portfolio is the vehicle through which you get credit for your best online contributions.

Please *do not* simply list all of your online contributions. Your task is to select your *best* online contributions, and to sort those contributions into the categories I provide. If you've blogged for me before, this will be nothing new. If you've never blogged for credit before don't worry. I'm deliberately not posting all the details now, because I've learned in the past that giving the details too soon causes everyone unnecessary stress. Once you get a little time to practice blogging, it will all start making a lot more sense.)

The portfolio assignment asks you to collect your best blogging, providing me with the evidence I need in order to evaluate your contributions. To do so, I ask that you provide informative links to those postings, that you sort those links into the categories and subcategories I provide, and that you offer some kind of narrative or analysis that helps me understand what you feel you have contributed to, and what you feel you are getting out of, the online discussion.

Here are some examples of top-notch portfolio pages that students have submitted in other classes.

Chris Ulicne

Jason Pugh
Nancy Gregg

Portfolio Requirements

Three sections, of equal weight.

Coverage
Depth
Interaction

"Coverage" is your way of making sure you get credit for work that I might not have noticed in the flurry of blog postings.

Depth is your opportunity to point out those entries which showcase your ability to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate -- higher-order critical thinking skills that move far beyond summarizing and repeating "the right answer."

Interaction is where you showcase your willingness to engage thoughtfully and respectfully with the ideas your peers present.

Coverage: Readings and Discussions

Coverage: Readings

Links to your best contributions on each of the assigned texts for the first week of class. For most of these, it's okay if your best contribution is a comment posted to the course blog or a peer's blog.

You can find a list of all the assigned readings.

Coverage: Discussions

When including Movie-related work in your portfolio, make sure that you prominently list the four movies that you chose to focus on (out of the list of 10 that are part of the syllabus) and link to your best contributions in each.

Depth

Longer entries, featuring links to outside sources, assigned readings, your own thoughtful presentation of relevant experiences, and/or integration of previous class topics. Entries that fall under the final R of the RRRR sequence -- the "Reflection" -- would be fine here.

Interaction

I consider two different kinds of useful interaction.

"Discussion" is a useful participation responding to prompts that I provide, or to engage productively with those who leave comments on your own blog entries. This is useful, but somewhat passive, in that you are mostly reacting to ideas that others throw your way.

"Xenoblogging" -- a term that I made up -- means the work that you do to support the blogging done by your peers. Few people find blogging rewarding if they feel that nobody is reading and reacting to what they wrote. That's why I devised the RRRR To help students figure out what I mean by this, I cooked up a quick taxonomy:

• "comment primo" (which launches a discussion on someone else's blog)
  
• the "comment grande" (a long comment posted on a peer blog, which you can then advertise via a cross-blog posting)
  
• the "comment informative" (in which a commenter uses his or her particular knowledge in order to flesh out a general or incomplete statement made in a peer's blog entry)
  
• the "link gracious" (which draws attention to the source of an idea or to a good conversation happening on someone else's blog)

There are thus several ways to get credit for your blogging. While the "coverage" requirement does involve posting SOMETHING for each assigned reading and discussion, I don't assign word counts or length requirements for any of the items in the portfolios.