You finish an attempt. Someone (or something) tells you what was off. You try again on a clearer goal. Something on the record moves.
That loop is the whole product. In ProfilEd we call the durable version of it an Evidence Footprint — and the surface that holds it is Shared Footprint.
Not a streak. Not a completion percentage. Not another place to park PDFs.
Attempt → feedback that closes a gap → footprint update → next attempt on the Curriculum Graph.
If you want the inventory of what belongs in a career evidence record, use the checklist companion. If you want why galleries lose context, read From Portfolio to Proof. This guide owns the connective loop only.
Three nodes — and the connection that matters
Practice. A goal-directed attempt under constraints — not passive watching. Ericsson and Harwell (2019), restating the classic deliberate-practice criteria, put it plainly: subjects should get “immediate informative feedback” and “repeatedly perform the same or similar tasks.”
Feedback. Information that changes the next move. Hattie and Timperley frame the three questions every useful signal answers: Where am I going? How am I going? Where to next? Sadler’s older warning still applies: if the information is “simply recorded” and never used to alter the gap, you get “dangling data,” not feedback.
Progress. Movement on a continuum — a learning progression, a Curriculum Graph node — not a taller pile of completed items. Hess’s progression work is the education language for that. CLR research describes the same idea as a longitudinal journey with feedback assignment to assignment (Wolf, Carbonaro & Wolf, 2022).
Shared Footprint is the outer-loop memory that keeps those three nodes from drifting apart. Inner loop: attempt → immediate feedback → retry. Outer loop: review the week’s work → update the footprint → set the next practice goal. Ericsson’s coaching cycle is the ancestor of that outer loop.
Learner action first
Start on the Curriculum Graph. Pick a goal clear enough that “good” is not a vibe.
Then act:
- Study Sessions — deliberate attempts on the node
- Story Quests — performance in a scenario with trade-offs
- Socratic AI Interviews — reasoned answers under probing
The learner moves first. AI and coaches respond. That order is not branding; it is how you avoid mistaking generated prose for practice.
| Surface | Learner action | Feedback | Lands in Shared Footprint | Progress signal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Curriculum Graph | Commit to a goal | Feed-up / criteria | Goal link | Position on the progression |
| Study Sessions | Attempt tasks | Immediate informative feedback | Attempts, corrections | Mastery movement on a node |
| Story Quests | Scenario performance | Debrief / rubric | Episode + feedback | Application over time |
| Socratic AI Interviews | Reasoned responses | Probe → revise | Excerpt + delta | Depth / transfer |
| Shared Footprint | Review trail; choose next practice; optional share | Self / mentor / career-team read | Longitudinal loop record | Visible growth |
Capture the attempt as evidence in motion
An attempt is not a certificate. It is a timestamped slice of work under stated conditions.
Keep enough of the trail that a later reader can see what you tried, what was incomplete, and what changed. That is loop fuel — not a museum. For the fuller “what belongs” list, lean on the checklist companion above; here the rule is narrower: if it cannot change the next attempt, it is noise.
Work-sample and simulation research backs treating practice trails as legitimate evidence inputs. McGaghie and colleagues (2011) showed simulation-based medical education with deliberate practice outperforming traditional exposure for clinical skill goals. The elements look familiar: objectives, repetition, measurement, informative feedback, error correction, then advance. Map carefully to Sessions, Quests, and Interviews — the mechanism travels even when the domain does.
Feedback that answers three questions
When feedback lands in Shared Footprint, it should make three things co-visible:
- Where am I going? — Graph goal / criteria
- How am I going? — current attempt vs that standard
- Where to next? — the concrete next practice move
Scores alone fail question three. Comments that never change the next Session fail Sadler’s test. Black and Wiliam’s line still holds: assessment becomes formative when the evidence is actually used to adapt teaching and learning.
Close the gap on the next attempt
Sadler’s three conditions have to run together:
(a) hold a concept of the standard
(b) compare current performance to it
(c) take action that closes the gap
Curriculum Graph owns (a). Practice + feedback enable (b). Shared Footprint + the next Session/Quest/Interview make (c) habitual. Skip (c) and you have a beautiful archive of dangling data.
See progress as movement, not a pile
Completion theatre is the industry’s fake progress metric — finish the course, still fail the audit. Cornerstone has even named the pattern in public. Degreed’s better product language is gap → develop → measure. We beat both admin heatmaps and badge-stack paths the same way: show movement on the Graph, driven by feedback that changed attempts.
A CLR-style journey is assignment-to-assignment with faculty (or coach) feedback in the loop. Shared Footprint is that idea for learner-owned practice trails — not a participation award, not a resume dump.
Not a vanity dashboard
Learning analytics literature has spent years criticising systems that stop at awareness and monitoring. Paulsen and Lindsay (2024) argue the affordances have to facilitate reflection and action — feedback, recommendation, planning — not dashboards that only make you watch yourself.
If opening Shared Footprint does not change what you practise next, it is furniture.
Private loop, then a shareable slice
Keep the messy retries private while you are closing gaps. When a mentor or career team needs a skim, share a slice: goal, latest attempts, feedback that mattered, next move. That is the reviewable trail — closer to formative CLR than to an org skills heatmap.
Sim-only tools that spit a session score and stop leave you with a number and nowhere to put it. Proof-inventory products that only chain artifacts still miss the connective loop. Shared Footprint’s job is the connection.
Start the loop
- Pick a Curriculum Graph goal.
- Run one Study Session, Story Quest, or Socratic AI Interview.
- Capture the feedback against the three questions.
- Schedule the next attempt that closes the gap.
- Open Shared Footprint and check that something moved.
Start your practice trail on ProfilEd →
See also Shared Footprint and the Curriculum Graph.
Sources cited (from research brief only)
- Ericsson & Harwell (2019), Frontiers in Psychology
- Hattie & Timperley (2007)
- Sadler (1989)
- Black & Wiliam (1998)
- Hess (2012) — learning progressions
- McGaghie et al. (2011), Academic Medicine
- Wolf, Carbonaro & Wolf (2022) — CLR journey
- Paulsen & Lindsay (2024) — learning analytics affordances
- 1EdTech CLR (standards cousin)
You finish an attempt. Someone (or something) tells you what was off. You try again on a clearer goal. Something on the record moves.
That loop is the whole product. In ProfilEd we call the durable version of it an Evidence Footprint — and the surface that holds it is Shared Footprint.
Not a streak. Not a completion percentage. Not another place to park PDFs.
Attempt → feedback that closes a gap → footprint update → next attempt on the Curriculum Graph.
If you want the inventory of what belongs in a career evidence record, use the checklist companion. If you want why galleries lose context, read From Portfolio to Proof. This guide owns the connective loop only.
Three nodes — and the connection that matters
Practice. A goal-directed attempt under constraints — not passive watching. Ericsson and Harwell (2019), restating the classic deliberate-practice criteria, put it plainly: subjects should get “immediate informative feedback” and “repeatedly perform the same or similar tasks.”
Feedback. Information that changes the next move. Hattie and Timperley frame the three questions every useful signal answers: Where am I going? How am I going? Where to next? Sadler’s older warning still applies: if the information is “simply recorded” and never used to alter the gap, you get “dangling data,” not feedback.
Progress. Movement on a continuum — a learning progression, a Curriculum Graph node — not a taller pile of completed items. Hess’s progression work is the education language for that. CLR research describes the same idea as a longitudinal journey with feedback assignment to assignment (Wolf, Carbonaro & Wolf, 2022).
Shared Footprint is the outer-loop memory that keeps those three nodes from drifting apart. Inner loop: attempt → immediate feedback → retry. Outer loop: review the week’s work → update the footprint → set the next practice goal. Ericsson’s coaching cycle is the ancestor of that outer loop.
Learner action first
Start on the Curriculum Graph. Pick a goal clear enough that “good” is not a vibe.
Then act:
- Study Sessions — deliberate attempts on the node
- Story Quests — performance in a scenario with trade-offs
- Socratic AI Interviews — reasoned answers under probing
The learner moves first. AI and coaches respond. That order is not branding; it is how you avoid mistaking generated prose for practice.
| Surface | Learner action | Feedback | Lands in Shared Footprint | Progress signal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Curriculum Graph | Commit to a goal | Feed-up / criteria | Goal link | Position on the progression |
| Study Sessions | Attempt tasks | Immediate informative feedback | Attempts, corrections | Mastery movement on a node |
| Story Quests | Scenario performance | Debrief / rubric | Episode + feedback | Application over time |
| Socratic AI Interviews | Reasoned responses | Probe → revise | Excerpt + delta | Depth / transfer |
| Shared Footprint | Review trail; choose next practice; optional share | Self / mentor / career-team read | Longitudinal loop record | Visible growth |
Capture the attempt as evidence in motion
An attempt is not a certificate. It is a timestamped slice of work under stated conditions.
Keep enough of the trail that a later reader can see what you tried, what was incomplete, and what changed. That is loop fuel — not a museum. For the fuller “what belongs” list, lean on the checklist companion above; here the rule is narrower: if it cannot change the next attempt, it is noise.
Work-sample and simulation research backs treating practice trails as legitimate evidence inputs. McGaghie and colleagues (2011) showed simulation-based medical education with deliberate practice outperforming traditional exposure for clinical skill goals. The elements look familiar: objectives, repetition, measurement, informative feedback, error correction, then advance. Map carefully to Sessions, Quests, and Interviews — the mechanism travels even when the domain does.
Feedback that answers three questions
When feedback lands in Shared Footprint, it should make three things co-visible:
- Where am I going? — Graph goal / criteria
- How am I going? — current attempt vs that standard
- Where to next? — the concrete next practice move
Scores alone fail question three. Comments that never change the next Session fail Sadler’s test. Black and Wiliam’s line still holds: assessment becomes formative when the evidence is actually used to adapt teaching and learning.
Close the gap on the next attempt
Sadler’s three conditions have to run together:
(a) hold a concept of the standard
(b) compare current performance to it
(c) take action that closes the gap
Curriculum Graph owns (a). Practice + feedback enable (b). Shared Footprint + the next Session/Quest/Interview make (c) habitual. Skip (c) and you have a beautiful archive of dangling data.
See progress as movement, not a pile
Completion theatre is the industry’s fake progress metric — finish the course, still fail the audit. Cornerstone has even named the pattern in public. Degreed’s better product language is gap → develop → measure. We beat both admin heatmaps and badge-stack paths the same way: show movement on the Graph, driven by feedback that changed attempts.
A CLR-style journey is assignment-to-assignment with faculty (or coach) feedback in the loop. Shared Footprint is that idea for learner-owned practice trails — not a participation award, not a resume dump.
Not a vanity dashboard
Learning analytics literature has spent years criticising systems that stop at awareness and monitoring. Paulsen and Lindsay (2024) argue the affordances have to facilitate reflection and action — feedback, recommendation, planning — not dashboards that only make you watch yourself.
If opening Shared Footprint does not change what you practise next, it is furniture.
Private loop, then a shareable slice
Keep the messy retries private while you are closing gaps. When a mentor or career team needs a skim, share a slice: goal, latest attempts, feedback that mattered, next move. That is the reviewable trail — closer to formative CLR than to an org skills heatmap.
Sim-only tools that spit a session score and stop leave you with a number and nowhere to put it. Proof-inventory products that only chain artifacts still miss the connective loop. Shared Footprint’s job is the connection.
Start the loop
- Pick a Curriculum Graph goal.
- Run one Study Session, Story Quest, or Socratic AI Interview.
- Capture the feedback against the three questions.
- Schedule the next attempt that closes the gap.
- Open Shared Footprint and check that something moved.
Start your practice trail on ProfilEd →
See also Shared Footprint and the Curriculum Graph.
Sources cited (from research brief only)
- Ericsson & Harwell (2019), Frontiers in Psychology
- Hattie & Timperley (2007)
- Sadler (1989)
- Black & Wiliam (1998)
- Hess (2012) — learning progressions
- McGaghie et al. (2011), Academic Medicine
- Wolf, Carbonaro & Wolf (2022) — CLR journey
- Paulsen & Lindsay (2024) — learning analytics affordances
- 1EdTech CLR (standards cousin)