E-portfolios, ethics, and digital skepticism

Bronwyn Williams has a piece in the works about the often deleterious effects (prescriptiveness, overemphasis on efficiency) of course management software, like Blackboard and its kin. (See his blog post about it here.) I was excited to hear about this project, because I have similar gripes. In fact, I’ll be presenting at CCCC about one such gripe, which pertains to e-portfolio systems like (ominous chord) Chalk & Wire.

Instructors and students who’ve had the pleasure might remember Chalk & Wire for its 400-gazillion-megabite non-HTML pages and its failure to beta-test copy-and-pasting from Mac versions of MS Word, among other fun features. My real complaint, though, when I speak at Cs, will be about the ease with which systems like Chalk & Wire shepherd student writing into shadowy, panoptic spaces – often with names and other signifiers attached – for purposes of curriculum review and assessment. Certainly curriculum review needs to happen, but I think such practice is ethically dubious when students aren’t asked for consent, when it’s assumed that they’re fine with their work being sent off into this cybernetic ether to be read by who-knows-who and archived who-knows-where, and for who-knows-how-long. E-portfolios, unchecked, can rob from students the distribution rights to, and even the ownership of, their own work.

Of course, the same is true of print portfolios, to a degree. I could certainly round up print-outs of my students’ work at the end of the term, and ship those copies off to some dusty office for curriculum review, but I don’t think it would be as easy to get away with it without students questioning where this stuff is being sent, and for whom to read. Something about the physical act of handing documents in makes people more aware of such things, whereas in the age of Facebook and Twitter, we’re a little more cavalier about shooting information off into cyberspace. We probably shouldn’t be, but we are. Thus, while I don’t think e-portfolios necessarily cause these ethically troubling practices, they certainly enable them. Digital spaces may be “democratizing” or “libratory” in some contexts, but they can go the Big-Brotherish route, too.

So. I tend to get grumpy about digital media studies in rhet-comp, I admit. This is because I don’t fancy myself a “new media person,” and I find the field’s attention to digital everything a little excessive and celebratory. Of course I think there are important studies to be done of digital rhetorics and compositions and discourses and remixes – really, I do – but I also think we need a more concentrated, conscious effort to be reflective and even skeptical about digital media. In short, I hope more digital media people follow Bronwyn’s lead with the “digital media is helpful, but …” approach. Go forth and critique.