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Electronic Portfolios: Macro-level Reading, Responding, and Evaluating

This process of making the writing classroom into an interactive, dynamic learning environment has been at the center of research and theory in computer-mediated communication and electronic portfolios for the past five years. The research of Kristine Blair and Pamela Takayoshi (1997), M. A. Syverson (2000, 1999) and the electronic portfolio systems used at Kalamazoo College (2000) and Alverno College (2000) demonstrate four elements that grow out of attempts to combine dynamic learning environments and institutionalized assessments. These electronic portfolio systems share-to different degrees-an emphasis on interaction, description, student self-assessment and development over time. They also rely upon an ideal of reading, responding to, and evaluating that occurs at the macro-level. This distanced response is justified in terms of a context-based form of assessment.