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Instructions for Preparing Your Web Portfolio & Checklist Women in Walled Communities: Silence, Voice, Vision Bryn Mawr College, Fall 2012 Jody Cohen, Anne Dalke, & Barb Toews

This process invites you to "diffract" on all the work you have done for this 360, to chronicle what has happened in your evolution as a listener, a speaker, a writer and an artist in the group, and to contribute to and assist us with the evaluation of your work. You've already created a number of products, both written and artistic. Now you will also

I. Co-create a final project
We are expecting multi-pronged, cross-disciplinary endeavors that involve both collaborative and individual components, including
    • a public demonstration, in Goodhart Teaching Theater, 1-3:30 pm, Mon, Dec. 17, of a tangible project that you have created together,
    • which builds on the particular skills, knowledge and experience of all students in the group, and
    • draws in some way on the Education, English and Criminal Justice knowledge you have acquired over the course of the semester.

* Post on Serendip whatever aspect of your final project is post-able; be sure that it indicates the names of all contributors.

* Individually, each of you should then post a 3-5 pp. comment on the project, critically reflecting on the ways in which it brought together the different angles of vision (individual and disciplinary) listed above:
    • how did each of the three courses/disciplines inform your final project?
    • how did completing the project push your thinking in each of these disciplines?
    • in what ways is your project a response to one of the several important, ongoing questions of the semester: how we might take meaningful action  in the world? (Feel free to use this query as a way to think both about how your project offers an effective way forward, and/or as a place to highlight what Tillie Olsen calls "foreground and background silences," those times that precede or follow action, those spaces when we need to slow down and think.)   

II. Create a final e-portfolio of all your work, due on Serendip by 12:30, Fri, Dec. 21. Do this by first logging on to Serendip. In the bar across the top of the page you'll see "my portfolio." Clicking on that will call up all web events you've created, all of our comments on them, as well as all your forum postings and comments.

* Review all this material, as well as any other work you've done that wasn't posted on Serendip (for some of you, this will include Paper #1 for "Voice"; for all of you, it will include your memos, journals and art work for "Vision"). Ruminate for a while on what you’re noticing as you revisit your whole semester's work.

* Upload a banner image to illustrate your portfolio (it's one of the options in "My account"--> "public profile settings"). See /exchange/portfolio/Ann%20Dixon for an illustration of what
this might look like.

* Then write a 5-8 pp. essay "diffracting" where you were when we began this process, where you are now, and what’s been happening in between. How have you been learning? What have you been learning? Where do you think that the edges of your learning now lie?

In order to do this, be specific and descriptive, but also evaluative. Please follow these steps:

** In this process, consider each of the courses as a distinct place of learning and engagement. Address each one independently in your self-assessment, and/but while also acknowleding ways in which your learning overlapped in each of these spaces.

** Complete the 360 checklist.

** Review your participation in our group work in the classroom and beyond: how present-and-contributing have you been in our class discussions, both large and small? What role have you assumed in our group dynamics, in-class, on-line, and in the other spaces relevant to our 360 (such as our 3 public events)? How much of your class work was focused on your own learning? In what ways have you been contributing to the learning of others?

** Re-consider your reading for the course: What were your joys-and-pleasures? What were your challenges? What were the ways that you grew as a reader? Where are your learning edges as a reader?

** Review also your written work: How much of your on-line writing was "stand-alone," how much written in response to others' reflections? What on-line response did you garner from your classmates? How much effort have you put into the web postings and each of your web events and other work (e.g. papers, Bryn Mawr research)? What can you say about the quality of these productions? What have you learned about your writing and thinking processes in this 360? Where have you "moved"?

** Describe your degree of critical, active engagement with the jail portion of the class:
* Describe how you prepared for, and reflected on, the jail environment and classroom experience outside of class?
* Describe your engagement with the women at the Cannery. How did you actively engage women in conversation and relationship? (Did you initiate or wait for someone to talk to you? To what degree did you push yourself outside your comfort zone? ) Describe how you critically reflected on your conversations and experiences with women outside of class time.
* Reflect, too, on your engagement in the art projects. Describe how you engaged with the art creation process as educational tool, sociologically, psychologically, socially, personally. (Did you push yourself outside your comfort zone? How seriously did you engage with the reflective exercises?) What can you say about the academic and personal learnings that grow out of the process, and final product, of art creation?

* Click "Self-Evaluation" here (or select it from the pull-down menu of "Create Content" @ the top of our home page, or select  "Create Self-Evaluation" from under our course name, in the left-hand column). Complete the form with the material you've written above. Refresh your browser, then check to make sure that this self-evaluation has shown up @ the bottom of your portfolio (which you can access, again, from the list along the top of the page).

Note that this means that your evaluation, as part of your portfolio, will be publicly available on the web.

You should e-mail us any comments that you do not want to be public.

In our response to this portfolio, we'll be giving you grades not just for the quality of your written work,
but also for class participation and process. Your self-evaluation will assist us with our own, as we
reflect on your engagement across all the dimensions of the 360.

We very much look forward to seeing what you come up with, as well as what you have to say about it.

Thanks for joining in the exploratory journey we've taken together this semester.
We've enjoyed it very much, and learned a lot--

Jody, Anne and Barb