Going Public with the Portfolio

Changes to the Deliverables

• Concept of portfolios as a single, coherent narrative, rather than as only artifact/annotation pairs.
• Changed the name of increments from specific artifacts (e.g. syllabus) to what the artifact should be conveying. Might require a newly generated artifact rather than an existing one.
• Complete a "public" increment as well as a "protected" increment.
• The "public" increment isn't really public: it is still protected, but is reviewed via email within 2 weeks of session by two other Commons participant as if it were a public document.
• One of your "public" reviewers will remain constant throughout, the other will rotate among the participants.
• At the end, when we really do go public, I anticipate each person will have one or two external reviewers from the parallel UK Commons project (but details need to be worked out -- more later on this.)
• Protected Portfolio repository for Commons participants.
• Review Form

Assumptions underlying the changes

• Starting to go public now might provide you with ideas and beginnings for some of the "narrative coherence" to your documents-as-a-whole that I don't think has yet emerged for all of your portfolios.
• The name change for portfolio increments was prompted by both semantical differences in the names we give to artifacts (e.g. syllabus), and by increasing the chance that different participants' increments will have similar intent.
• Engaging in a revision cycle allows us to interact with our portfolios as it unfolds:

  Andy Clark, in "Natural Born Cyborgs" (2001) suggests that externalization of thought, through various types of representation, gives rise to new perceptual and cognitive operations that allow for reflection, critique, and iteration. That is, the act of bringing thoughts into material form, such as expressing software designs in words and symbols, is not merely a formal exercise, akin to taking mental dictation, but is itself constitutive of and essential to creation.

• Making increments public makes them explicit, hence available to critique and change:

  There is a world of difference between holding a belief, or expecting something, and using human language to say so. The difference is that only if spoken out, and thus objectivized, does a belief become criticizable. Before it is formulated in language, I may be one with my belief: the belief is part of my acting, part of my behavior. If formulated, it may be criticized and found to be erroneous; in which case I may be able to discard it. (Karl Popper, "Campbell on the Evolutionary Theory of Knowledge", 1987}

• One reader will be same throughout for continuity and depth. One reader rotates for breadth. And one external reader for helping to bring into focus issues of context, audience, and purpose.
• Feedback of work-in-progress is typical in writing, scholarship, art, and design disciplines (as well as many others). In the software world it is reflected in practices such as usability testing with prototypes.
• Deeper engagement in the "other" two levels of access; thinking about the public document affords additional opportunities for private reflection. If you don't capture your private reactions and reflections as you go, you might miss the most important aspects for learning that this project has to offer.
• Going from protected to public in fixed increments helps to lighten the load and meet the final deadline with something that you are proud of.
• E-copies in a protected repository makes access easy and benchmarks and documents change.
• Website increases mutual accountability, hence commitment:

  It is in each person's interest to make a contract and then break it, thus receiving the benefits without incurring the costs. No contract is ever perfectly specified. Enforcement is nearly always imperfect. Even with considerable coercive power and effective techniques of measurement and monitoring, a ruler cannot achieve total compliance unless there is a policeman in every corner, a fed under every bed. There is always room for shirking and cheating.
  ...
  "One way that rulers can reduce the costs of enforcement is to create or encourage situations where taxpayers engage in quasi-voluntary compliance. It is voluntary because taxpayers choose to pay. It is quasi-voluntary because the noncompliant are subject to coercion -- if they are caught."
  ...
  "Quasi-voluntary compliance rests on reciprocity. It is a contingent strategy in which individual taxmpayers are more likely to cooperate if they have reasonable expectations that both the rulers and other taxpayers will also cooperate. The key lies in what rulers and other government officials do to create mutual expectations of tax payment. (Levi, Of Rule and Revenue, 1988)

• The review form provides "authentic" assessment for peer review of scholarship (ref: Bob Broad, What we really value)