Homework for December 3

During our Nov 5 meeting we made some good progress grouping our scenarios into categories based the locus of control and purpose.  The categories are reflected by the colors in the sheet named Lynn's New Scenario  Summary in our Google spreadsheet:
  https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AkGC6juditaYdE9nZmxjV2piRFF4R0RBeG5JNjBlOHc

• Scenarios with a pink background (EAOP, NC, TLAP, ULP) are focused primarily on assessment of student learning (at the program and individual student levels)  and the program controls the structure and nature of portfolio activities.
• CILP, TSDC, LAPTF (columns C, G, and M) with a green background describe portfolio use at the course level to deepen student learning as well as to assess individual students.  In these scenarios, a single instructor designs and facilitates the portfolio activities.  We also put CHA (column D) into this category because the focus is a clinical practicum, but it's clear that portfolios are used throughout the nursing curriculum .
• In MRLAP. WGS, and HP (columns F, H, and I - the student determines what goes into the portfolio, with guidance and facilitation from others and in two of the three the focus is student learning and assessment.
  

There's a fair amount of overlap in the needs expressed in scenarios in the same and even in different categories.  But as we all know, there's also tremendous variety in the way portfolio experiences are designed and structured.  It will be important to get this point across when we write the minispecs.

We agreed that our next step would be to identify a primary scenario for each group and then consider how we might be able to modify some of the existing personas so that they'll work with our portfolio scenarios.  Can we think about accomplishing part 1 of this task (identifying the primary scenario) asynchronously, so we can focus on the personas question at our next meeting?
 
So, to get this conversation started, I'd like to propose the following as the primary scenarios:
 

1. For the first category (controlled by program, focus on learning outcomes assessment, the two most comprehensive scenarios are Clipper College Portfolio Process  (ULP) and Fashion Teaching, Learning and Assessment Portfolio (TLAP).  Of the two, I am inclined to choose the Clipper scenario as primary because  the discipline (business) is subject to external review and accreditation.  But either one would work well.
2. I think English Capstone Portfolio (CLIP) and Learning and assessment portfolio for teaching French (LAPTF) best represent the needs for portfolios used at the course level. CLIP learns more toward the instructor controlled approach whereas it sounds like the students in LAPTF get to decide what the add to the portfolio.  I'm inclined to choose the CLIP scenario because it gets at the need for control over the structure and visual representation of the portfolio framework, which is very important to our faculty, but either would work well.
3. For the student controlled portfolios, the primary characters in two of the three scenarios map well to our existing personas.  Bob choose Fatik as the subject of the Global Liberal Studies Heuristic Portfolio (HP) and the  Wagner Graduate School of Public Service Social Portfolio is fairly generic, so I think we could change the school/discipline to information science and make this Andy's story.  At the same time, I really like the emphasis on developing habits in reflective practice in Medical registrar learning and assessment portfolio, which is so important in the education and the health professions.  Perhaps we could write up a brief provisional persona for Peter to get his story across.

 
Those are my initial thoughts.  I hope each of you can weigh in over the next few days so we can focus our next meeting on personas needed to support the primary scenarios.

-- Lynn 

Homework for November 5

• If you have not done so already, please finish the work of documenting the user needs for each persona in the scenarios your contributed by no later than noon onNov 3.  Instructions are provided on this page under Homework for October 29.   Once all the needs are documented, Nancy and I will try to group the related needs so we can easily detect gaps and redundancies.
• Also, please try to re-read the Institutional Scenarios contributed by our team members  and give some thought to how they relate to one another.  Last week we discussed grouping scenarios with similar characteristics into families with one scenario in the group serving as the primary and others as secondary.  Think about how you might group our current collection of scenarios and why and whether, as a collection, they seem to represent the range of portfolio use at your institution.
  

Homework for October 29

Portfolio Scenario Analysis  Spreadsheet: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=tOgflcWjbDQxGDAxnI60e8w

1.  If necessary, retitle your scenarios with a concise name (no more than 4 words) that gets at the  heart of their purpose.

2.  Enter the  name and its abbreviation into the legend area of the Needs sheet in the Google spreadsheet above.

3.  Use the Needs worksheet to document the specific needs of each persona in your scenario.  Use the first column to enter a concise description of the need.  Then use columns 2-4 to give the role of the person with the need (i.e., role within the portfolio process), the title of the scenario in which the need was identified, and the component or solution used to address the need in your current portfolio implementation.   If the need has already been documented in column A by another team member, create a new row beneath the existing need description and add the details for your scenario.

Institutional Scenarios - Homework for October 22

During the October 8 meeting, team members agreed begin writing context scenarios for portfolio implementations on their campus.  To get an idea of the type of product we're shooting for, please read the article on scenarios on the Fluid Project site at: http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Scenarios. 

Since portfolio processes often involve multiple roles, your scenarios might mention several different people (for example, a student, an instructor, an assessment coordinator, and evaluator) who interact with one another and the portfolio system at various points in the process.  Give each person a name, and write a couple of sentences about each person at the top of the page (if any of the existing personae in Persona Set embody the relevant characteristics of a person in your story, by all means use it.).  Then write a short, descriptive narrative, keeping the focus on the needs and goals of the people in your story rather than on specific implementation solutions. Where appropriate, try to use portfolio action verbs from the list developed by the Sakai portfolio community. 

Each of us agreed to write up at least one scenario by next Friday, October, 15.  If a single scenario is not adequate to represent the full range of needs at your institution, feel free to write more than one. 

Create an entry in the table below for each scenario you've written or plan to write.  Then link the title to the page containing the scenario (try to keep each scenario on a separate page.)