August 8, 2015 - 15:48
Concluding, Diffracting, and Assessing Your Work
in the "Arts of Resistance" 360°, Fall 2015
DUE by 12:30 p.m., Friday, December 18
 | "reflection only displaces the same elsewhere .... What we need is ... to diffract ... so that we get more promising interference patterns" (Donna Haraway). Checklist |
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, speaker, writer, artist, connector and agent for change in the group. Your self-evaluation will assist us with our assessments, as we reflect on your engagements and accomplishments across all the dimensions of the 360°.
You've already created a number of written and artistic products. During reading period, you have five more tasks:
1) Wed-Fri, Dec. 9-11, help to set up and participate in our final on-campus exhibit, opening and cafe.
2) By midnight on Sunday, Dec. 14, post on Serendip a visual representation of your own public art project, and a 1-p. description of what you were attempting, what you accomplished, and what you learned.
3) Also post a reflection on what occurred during our event, and a description of your own contribution to it.
4) On Monday, Dec. 14 or Tuesday, Dec. 15, you'll have a 1/2-hour meeting with Anne, Jody and Joel to review your semester's work.
5) By midnight before your meeting, please log on to Serendip again and
* View the e-portfolio that Serendip has created of much of your work. When you log on to our group page on Serendip, you’ll see “e-portfolios” in the bar across the top; clicking on that will call up your portfolio, which has gathered together all of your well events, postings and comments. If you haven't done this already, open, edit and TAG EACH OF YOUR WEB EVENTS as "web event" (yes, it's a hassle, but it will make the events more findable and the portfolio more readable). If you haven't already tagged your short postings for each individual class, you will probably find it useful to do that as well (and we will find it helpful).
* Take some time to review all this material, and prepare some notes in response to the following questions. What do notice as you revisit your whole semester's work? 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 the edges of your learning now lie?
* In order to do this, be specific and descriptive, but also evaluative. In this process, consider each of the courses as a distinct place of learning and engagement. Address each class, as well as the creative work you did with Sheila' s guidance, independently in your self-assessment, while also acknowledging ways in which your learning overlapped in each of these spaces.
* Complete the "Arts of Resistance" 360° checklist and submit it electronically (this is the only dimension of the portfolio that will be private = readable only by Anne, Jody and Joel).
* 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° (including our field trips, dinners, individual conferences, and artistic collaborations)? How much of your class work was focused on your own learning? In what ways have you been contributing to the learning of others? (Responding to others' experimental essays is one dimension of this that we'd like you to speak to explicitly.)
* Re-consider your reading for the cluster: 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 your written work: How much of your on-line writing was "stand-alone," how much written in response to others' reflections? How much effort have you put into the web postings and each of your web events and other papers? 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"?
* Reflect also on the degree of your critical, active engagement with the artistic portion of the class. How did Sheila's visits and instruction influence your creative thinking and endeavors? How much time and energy did you spend on that work? How satisfied were you with your level of engagement and the result? How has your creative work grown, changed, developed over the course of the semester? Consider what you’ve learned about ‘process’ and ‘material': in what ways has the creative component impacted, transformed, or made you look at the world differently?
5) Complete the 360° evaluation form. Bring it with you when you...
6) ...meet with Anne, Jody and Joel for 1/2-an-hour on December 14th or 15th, to discuss your reflections.
After this meeting (almost there!), you have three more tasks:
1) Write a final field-based paper reflecting on what you learned from your experience in the prison this semester. Begin with a 1-p. description of one important (vivid, definitive, symbolic?) experience that really stood out to you during our time there, a story that speaks to the nature of what you experienced. Drawing on the knowledge you’ve acquired in English, Education, and/or Political Science, write an additional 2-4 pages making sense of your experience. Post-and-tag this for all three courses.
2) Post 2-pp. reporting on what emerged during your meeting with your professors. Title it "Self Evaluation and Reflection," and also use the check box to tag it "Self Evaluation and Reflection."
3) Upload a banner image to illustrate a central theme of your portfolio. When you login, you will land on your My Account page. Open “edit," and scroll down to “Personal Banner for E-Portfolio, where you can make an selection to upload and caption. For examples of what this could look like, see
AquamarineAura, "Opening up.... it takes expression and listening":
/oneworld/eportfolio/AquamarineAura
nkechi, "Move Up, Move Up": /oneworld/eportfolio/nkechi
Purple Finch, "Even More": /oneworld/eportfolio/Purple%20Finch
tajiboye, "Isn't everything blurred together in a sense..why must we separate the flower from the dirt it grows from": /oneworld/eportfolio/tajiboye
Refresh your browser, then check to make sure that the final paper, banner and self-evaluation have all shown up in 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 are also welcome to e-mail us any comments that you do not want to be public).
Any questions about this process? E-mail adalke@brynmawr.edu.
ALL WORK IS DUE by 12:30 p.m. on Fri, 12/18/15.
In our responses to our meeting and this portfolio, we'll be giving you grades for the quality of your written work, for class participation and process. 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 rather astonishing exploratory journey we've taken together this semester.
We've enjoyed it very much, and learned a lot--
Anne, Jody and Joel