ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the operations of an approach to writing instruction that is also, in its essential operations, an approach to assessment. It also describes an approach to writing instruction that creates opportunities for students to document their learning and to use what they've collected in the process to engage in a kind of self-assessment by writing informed "expressive representations" of what they've learned. Experiential—Learning Documentary is a practice that first emerged in response to the assessment demands of collaborative audio-visual writing projects and courses, and which has found purchase within a particular institutional context. All documentaries are forensic in that at some point, the documentary makers look back on all of the assets that have been amassed and begin to fashion a story from those assets. In short, documentary making is a methodology of forecasting learning—because the emergent stories are representations of things that the documentary makers did not yet know when they began rolling film.
