The Learning Record Online (LRO) is a system that documents student performance and allows for reflection on the learning process. By accumulating work samples and observations, students analyze and evaluate their work in terms of the five dimensions of learning (confidence and independence, skills and strategies, knowledge and understanding, use of prior and emerging experience, reflection) and the course strands (these differ depending on the specific course).
This page provides information about the course strands, the five dimensions of learning, and grade criteria for this course. For more general information about the LRO, please visit Peg Syverson's LRO page.
We see growth and development when learners' confidence and independence become congruent with their actual abilities and skills, content knowledge, use of experience, and reflectiveness about their own learning. It is not a simple case of "more (confidence and independence) is better." In a science class, for example, an overconfident student who has relied on faulty or underdeveloped skills and strategies learns to seek help when facing an obstacle; or a shy student begins to trust her own abilities, and to insist on presenting her own point of view in discussion. In both cases, students are developing along the dimension of confidence and independence.
Skills and strategies represent the "know-how" aspect of learning. When we speak of "performance" or "mastery," we generally mean that learners have developed skills and strategies to function successfully in certain situations. Skills and strategies are not only specific to particular disciplines, but often cross disciplinary boundaries. In a writing class, for example, students develop many specific skills and strategies involved in composing and communicating effectively, from research to concept development to organization to polishing grammar and correctness, and often including technological skills for computer communication.
Knowledge and understanding refers to the "content" knowledge gained in particular subject areas. Knowledge and understanding is the most familiar dimension, focusing on the "know-what" aspect of learning. In a psychology class, knowledge and understanding might answer a wide range of questions such as, What is Freud's concept of ego? Who was Carl Jung? What is "behaviorism"? These are typical content questions. Knowledge and understanding in such classes includes what students are learning about the topics; research methods; the theories, concepts, and practices of a discipline; the methods of organizing and presenting our ideas to others, and so on.
The use of prior and emerging experience involves learners' abilities to draw on their own experience and connect it to their work. A crucial but often unrecognized dimension of learning is the capacity to make use of prior experience as well as emerging experience in new situations. It is necessary to observe learners over a period of time while they engage in a variety of activities in order to account for the development of this important capability, which is at the heart of creative thinking and its application. With traditional methods of evaluating learning, we cannot discover just how a learner's prior experience might be brought to bear to help scaffold new understandings, or how ongoing experience shapes the content knowledge or skills and strategies the learner is developing. In a math class, students scaffold new knowledge through applying the principles and procedures they've already learned: algebra depends on the capacity to apply basic arithmetic procedures, for example.
Reflection refers to the developing awareness of the learner's own learning process, as well as more analytical approaches to the subject being studied. When we speak of reflection as a crucial component of learning, we are not using the term in its commonsense meaning of reverie or abstract introspection. We are referring to the development of the learner's ability to step back and consider a situation critically and analytically, with growing insight into his or her own learning processes, a kind of metacognition. It provides the "big picture" for the specific details. For example, students in a history class examining fragmentary documents and researching an era or event use reflection to discover patterns in the evidence and construct a historical narrative. Learners need to develop this capability in order to use what they are learning in other contexts, to recognize the limitations or obstacles confronting them in a given situation, to take advantage of their prior knowledge and experience, and to strengthen their own performance.
Course Strands differ depending upon the course. Here are the course strands for the different courses I have taught.
1) Risk-taking
Part of any learning process involves taking risks. Through the use of the Learning Record and the inventio processes of building a Mystory, this class will provide an environment that enables and rewards risk-taking. Part of your task in this class is to take risks in an attempt to build your Mystory and help build new ways of reading and writing (what Ulmer calls electracy).
2) Developing inventio processes
Throughout this class, you will be asked to compile a lot of information that may or may not be related. This is a process that the Greek and Roman rhetoricians have called inventio, and it will allow you to put seemingly disconnected ideas together in new and interesting ways. It will be your task to develop ways of gathering this information, sorting through it, and using it to make new meanings.
3) Developing revision processes
All writing is revision, and we will be focusing on continuous revision throughout this semester. You will compose nearly all of your work in a Wiki, and this will allow you to track the various revisions of your work (through the "history" link for each page). While writers find different ways to revise their work, no one creates substantive writing without significant revision. Another of your tasks for this semester will
be to develop processes of revision that work for you.
4) Multimedia Writing
In this class, writing will involve something much more than words on a page. We will be composing online, and this means that hyperlinks, images, video, and audio are all part of the writing equation. These different media are not merely supplements to your writing, they are part of the text that you create. You should consider an image to be a part of your text, not an "add-on" to the words you've written. Hyperlinks are not merely different ways of finding information, they are a new medium with which you can experiment. You will be tasked with using varying media to write in this class as you create the different parts of your Mystory.
Understand and apply literary analysis to a wide range of texts
We'll be studying a number of critical approaches to literature and culture in this class. Throughout the course, you should be thinking about how to apply these methods to all types of texts, literary or otherwise. In addition, you should be thinking about how literary analysis intersects with other disciplines.
Analyze, apply, and formulate theories about the work of narratives in culture
This class will allow you to consider how different narratives shape our experience. As we study different theories, you should be figuring out how to apply them to different texts and how you can combine them to formulate your own ideas about how and why narratives matter.
Develop and refine writing and revision skills
This is a Significant Writing Component (SWC) course, so your writing assignments will be a way to refine your writing processes and skills. As we revise and refine our writing in this class, you should be developing practices that you can carry with you after you leave this course.
Appreciation of Multiple Arguments and Positions
Arguments are complex. They deal with audiences, situations, and texts that are constantly changing. In order to account for this complexity, writers and readers of arguments should come to a rhetorical situation with a number of different arguments in mind. A balanced approach to argument considers multiple positions and weighs these positions in a thoughtful, considerate way. In addition, this approach allows us to step out of our own shoes and into those of another. By putting ourselves in different roles, we can better appreciate positions with which we disagree.
Critical reading skills
Who is the audience for a text? Who is the author? What is the argument they're making? Why would they make such an argument? What language do they use, and why? These are some of the questions a critical reader asks. Critical reading is about not only understanding what an argument says or whether we agree or disagree. Critical readers consider (among other things) how an argument works, how it attempts to persuade, who it attempts to persuade, and whether the argument acknowledges multiple viewpoints.
Thoughtful revision
Commas, periods, capitalization are just one very small part of revision. When revising a piece of writing, we should consider: moving portions of the argument around, eliminating weak points, expanding stronger arguments, and pulling things together to form a cohesive argument. When we say "thoughtful revision" in this class, we mean this type of carefully considered rewriting of a paper.
Collaboration
Writing is not a solitary activity. We always interact with other people and other texts as we create and interpret arguments. In addition to working with a group on a project, we also help one another understand arguments through class discussions and reading responses. When considering your collaborative work in this class, think about all the ways you've been able to draw on the work of others, and think about how you've contribued to the learning processes of others.
Represents outstanding participation in all course activities, perfect or near perfect attendance, and all assigned work completed on time. Also represents very high quality in all work produced for the course. LRO provides evidence of significant development across the five dimensions of learning. The Learning Record at this level demonstrates activity that goes significantly beyond the required course work in one or more course strands.
Represents excellent participation in all course activities, near perfect attendance, and all assigned work completed on time. Also represents consistently high quality in course work. Evidence of marked development across the five dimensions of learning.
Represents good participation in all course activities, minimal absences, and all assigned work completed. Also represents generally good quality overall in course work. Evidence of some development across the five dimensions of learning.
Represents uneven participation in course activities, uneven attendance, and some gaps in assigned work completed. Represents inconsistent quality in course work. Evidence of development across the five dimensions of learning is partial or unclear.
Represents minimal participation in course activities, poor attendance, serious gaps in assigned work completed, or very low quality in course work. Evidence of development is not available.
Work for the course is incomplete and the instructor will allow the student additional time to complete it. The amount of time allowed is at the discretion of the instructor.
You will be writing at least one observation per week, but you would benefit from writing as many observations as possible. The more observations you write, the more evidence you will be able to draw from when compiling your LRO. Observations are 1-3 sentence snapshots of your learning process. You should think of your learning as a scientific experiment - these 1-3 sentence chunks will be an observation of that experiment. You can address some of the following during observations (this list is not exhaustive):
-What strategies/activities are working well for you.
-What strategies/activities are not working for you.
-How you approached an assignment.
-Something you notice during class discussion.
-Learning strategies that you discover during the semester.
Here's an example of a Part A from one of my previous classes.
Part A.1:
While I was younger I used to sit and watch my mom doing her homework and pretend that I too was busy at work. My mom has a psychology and English degree, while going to school she constantly was writing different papers for her classes. As a child is was also “practicing” her English skills on me, continuously correcting my speaking. Since I was surrounded by English I began writing at an early age, my mom encouraged me to do so. I would write short stories, they were simple and always ended in “They lived happily ever after…” The point is it was still writing.
I feel that of all people, the one who showed me how to write should be the one who knows it best, my mother. When we began talking about my writing she broke it up by grades. She started with kinder-4th, 5th-6th, 7th-8th, high school, and then finally present day. My mother agreed with me that in the beginning my writing was simple; I used easy to read diction, and did not hold any sort of writing style. I wrote just to finish the story. She told me I had cute ideas but there were a lot of errors in my passages. The main problem in my writing at that age, and she says it is understandable was my grammar. I had not yet learned the usage of a semi-colon, proper usage of a hyphen, or even a comma. I would take these things and just stick them wherever I thought would be good. During fifth grade and sixth she said this where I really began to show a passion for writing. I now had learned how to use proper marks and could write more smoothly. She said that I was able to come up with more detailed prompts on my own and could write about them more easily. During these years she said I would fall off the subject and drift off a little bit. In seventh and eighth grade she said she really enjoyed seeing what I was writing for my classes or on my own. My mother says these grade levels are where I showed huge progress in my writing. I now could stay on subject, write using different marks, and wrote much more complex.
When we began talking about high school she was able to begin telling me more, she says it is easier to remember it in detail since it seems just like yesterday. She reminded me of at teacher that I had when I was a freshman, Mr. Fontenot. Mr. Fontenot really enjoyed my writing and was constantly helping develop my writing skills. While in this class, she said my writing took a whole new level. She continued by saying she remembers him giving me an assignment to write a 5,000 word story about Edgar Allan Poe. In this assignment I had to take one of his stories and change the ending. My mother says that I took this assignment extremely seriously and worked on it every minute of the day until it was due. Once it was done, and read it to her, she was amazed. This is when she noticed that I now had my own personal writing style; she also said I now was comfortable with my writing. She explained to me that it was apparent that I was now confident to write and I was no longer holding back. My writing in her opinion continued to get better each year. The next thing she brought up was my junior year. This was an important year because I did a lot of writing for my college admission essays and had so many different topics to write, some more difficult then others. In these essays she said that I continued to show that I knew how to write using appropriate diction, was able to organize my sentences, and it came together to form a pretty well put together essay.
Since I do not see my mother everyday I emailed her a couple of short essays that I have written this year. The two sample papers came from my critical thinking class. Once she had read them she called and we continued where we had left off. My mother started by saying “Is this your writing?” I was confused of course it was my writing. She laughed and began to explain why she said that. She told me that my writing had changed so much that it was hard to tell I had written them. She pointed out how now I wrote in a way that she was not use to seeing me write. I no longer was writing in the 5 paragraph format, I was using larger words, and organizing my sentences in a more complex way. She told me my writing had gone from a child’s level to an adult level. I was now a college student and it was apparent. My mother said that the reason for this was probably all the reading I had begun doing. She included that my writing could have been at this level earlier if I had read more throughout my life. I was never one to pick up books and read to just read. Now that I was forced to read more my writing was showing a major improvement. My mother finished this interview by saying that overall my writing is very well put together and easy to read. Of course there are improvements needed, just as in everything else. She told me to continue to work on grammar, watch switching from first to third person, and keep on working on my diction. My writing can do nothing but progress.
Part A.2
Pulling out samples of my old writing and looking at them today was really odd. I really am amazed about how much my writing has truly changed. Like my mother had said, when I was younger my writing was simple. The sentences consisted of four maybe five words. I would run together sentence after sentence. It is funny; I have no idea what I was thinking. I think once I did go to high school and attend some advance placement courses my writing progressed to a new level. I was finally able to stay on topic and my writing actually made since, it was a good change. As my mother said Mr. Fontenot helped me with developing my writing skills. However, I also feel that an 11th grade teacher, Mrs. Turpin continued to help me. This teacher was the type everyone was afraid of; this was because she was critical. She was strict with our writing and graded harder then any teacher I had ever had. This was a huge challenge for me; I was used to getting straight A’s. I received my first B+ in this class and was told that my writing was good but did need work. She told me I needed to increase my vocabulary and work on my writing structure. The next semester I worked extremely hard, and this time my writing improved and it showed. This is the first time that I felt confident about my writing. As time progressed I concentrated more on my writing and the way it was put together. Once I started college I knew that it would only get better. I was put in a critical thinking seminar for TIP, at first I did not think I would learn anything, but I was wrong. This class was the best thing that could have happened to me. This class was run strictly on discussion. It was up to the class to continue the topic. I developed communication skills, argumentation, and continued to progress in my writing. While in this class I saw my writing change from one level to other. This level is where I am today, I think I write well. I do see that I need improvement in grammar and my writing structure. I would also like to work on my speaking skills and be able to speak without hesitation. I feel at this point I know the basics, can write and speak at a pretty high level, and look forward to progressing to an even higher one.
You will do a Part B: Analysis at both the midterm and final.In Part B, you discuss your work and classroom activities in terms of the course strands and the dimensions of learning. In this section, you will:
-make interpretations and come to some conclusions about your own learning in the course
-highlight areas in which you have developed and consider how your work illustrates that development
-prepare an analysis at the midterm and at the end of the term
Why is this important?
By analyzing your work you will be able to see how learning occurs over a period of time, and how your own work illustrates what you have learned.
You will do a Part C: Evaluation at both the midterm and final. In Part C, your tasks will be to:
-evaluate your progress and development by specifically matching your work with the appropriate grade criteria
-suggest future steps for development
-provide your instructor with suggestions
Why is this important?
When looking critically at the work you have selected to include in your Learning Record and estimate a grade based on that work, you are focusing on the positive aspects of your experience in the course: what you have learned, what you have succeeding in doing, and what surprised you about your learning process.
The Learning Record Online (LRO) is a portfolio-based assessment tool that asks students to argue for a grade based upon criteria set by the instructor. Students gather, analyze, and present their work in terms of the goals of the course and their development as a learner.
Here are some answers to frequently asked questions regarding the LRO. You can also check out the LRO discussion forum for answers to questions not listed here.
Grades in this class are based on the evidence and arguments presented in the LRO. I can only consider evidence that you've included in the LRO and how you've presented that evidence when deciding whether or not your LRO evaluation is accurate. If you've presented strong evidence, analyzed that evidence in terms of the dimensions of learning and course strands, and evaluated that work in terms of the grade criteria, you should be successful
Yes, there are specific due dates. See the course calendar for these dates.
Grades are determined by how well you analyze your work in terms of course strands and dimensions of learning and whether you provide ample evidence that your work matches with the appropriate grade criteria. I am not looking for "conversion stories" in which students explain how this class "changed [their] whole life." I am looking for an argument that shows evidence of learning and development in terms of the dimensions of learning and the course strands.
Letter grades are only discussed during the midterm and final LRO. However, I will comment on work throughout the semester.
Yes. Go to the My LRO screen and click on the content that you'd like to edit. Then click the "edit" tab. Keep in mind that all LRO materials are considered final as of the due date listed in the course calendar.
This is definitely encouraged. Some of your evidence will be used in both of your LROs. To do this, you do NOT need to submit the work sample or observation again. You just need to change the "LRO Version" field from "Midterm" to "Final."
No. You only complete Part A once.
All grading systems are "subjective" in some sense. The LRO allows for a discussion between teacher and student - a discussion about the evaluation process. All grade criteria are listed ahead of time. This allows for everyone to work from the same list - no surprises.
No. The grade you earn on your Final LRO will be your grade for this class. Think of the midterm LRO as a first draft of your LRO - it's an opportunity to understand how the process works so that you are ready for the final LRO.
Final LROs will be very different from midterm LROs. Hopefully, you will have learned more and will have more to talk about. In addition, you'll have much more evidence to draw upon during the final LRO.
Yes. Parts B and C are essentially papers about your own learning. These essays/papers are an analysis of your work in terms of the course strands and the dimensions of learning and an evaluation of your work in terms of the grade criteria.
The LRO is used in a number of Rhetoric and Writing classes along with classes in other departments and other universities. The system allows students to reflect on their learning processes and to think about the strategies they employ as they move through a course. The system is definitely different than most other evaluation systems, but there is a "method to the madness." You are always welcome to ask questions about the Learning Record as long as you recognize that this is the system that we'll be using throughout the semester.
We will discuss the LRO in class, but most of the work will be completed outside of class. If time permits, we will have an in-class LRO workshop.