One quick follow-up to my comments post yesterday. The way I am looking at comments assumes that there are at least two types of people, comments from the trusted community (with accounts on the system) and comments from outside. There is definitely a need to have comments be private in instructional – particularly assessment-related situations.
Treating a comment on par with a reflection emphasizes the value attached to a comment.
I’m also thinking that either individual (the person making the comment and the person receiving them) may want to re-use those comments/reflections for other contexts and purposes.
Why a content type/object? For re-use!
As a student, I may want to be able to indicate what an instructor thought of my work – or – perhaps use two comments and reflect on how those two comments, provided at different times, demonstrates my growth (increase in competency).
As an instructor I might want to do something similar — particularly with respect to a teaching portfolio. I may want to select a representative comment to demonstrate how I evaluate my students, or several to demonstrate how I have changed my approach over time.
These objects do need to be portable.
The same thing goes for my rubrics — or how I mark particular assignments or an overall portfolio. The assessment schema needs to be an object as well.
If we expect comments to re-used, that is serve as an artifact/item in a portfolio) then we need a very granular export capability within the eportfolio (granular portability). As well, the permissions capability needs to be quite granular as well…
Note
I edited the sentence above. It originally said: “Granularity and portability… for both the content and permissions for re-use are important requirements to consider.”
