Jenny Mendieta Autonomy and ICT

The comment about teachers with bags of portfolios rings a bell. At about the same time period, the curriculum at my university underwent a major change, one component of which was the inclusion of portfolios to report self-access learning. Originally, students were expected to make at least 10 portfolio entries per semester which the teacher could briefly skim for evaluation purposes. Many of the teachers (even though they were heavily involved in the new curriculum design) seemed to believe that they needed to treat the portfolio entries as standard writing tasks and give detailed feedback (including using error codes). At the end of the first semester, complaints about ridiculously heavy marking loads meant the number of required portfolio entries dropped to 5; the next semester, the same problem led to a reduction to 3 entries (which makes you wonder if it should still be called a portfolio). Eventually, this component of courses was dropped entirely.
A question emerging from this experience (and presumably from your own) is why did teachers feel they needed to give such detailed feedback? Is it part of their identity as teachers? Are they worried about being accused of student neglect (along the lines of O'Neill's ELTJ article from 1991)?