the Portfolio in English 131 (and all 100-Level PWR Courses)

In English 131, 70% of a student’s final grade is determined by a final portfolio. A typical 131 Final Portfolio consists of a selection of three to five revised showcase pieces, including at least one of the two major projects, and a series of critical reflections that discuss these showcase pieces. While students are required to include original drafts of all their work done over the course of the quarter, they are empowered to select which assignments will be evaluated and explain their choices in the critical reflection.

The remaining 30% of the student’s course grade is determined by participation.

This chapter provides an overview of the rationale behind using portfolios in English 131, shares strategies for how to prepare students to compile their portfolios, discusses how to determine students’ final grades through the evaluation of their portfolio and class participation.

The Philosophy behind Portfolio Evaluation

The philosophy behind portfolio grading in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric is captured in three words: COLLECT, SELECT, and REFLECT.

• COLLECT: Over the quarter, students work on various assignment sequences—a sequence consists of several “short” assignments (generally two to three pages in length) that provide an opportunity to practice and build the skills they will need in order to successfully complete a “major” assignment (of five to seven pages). These sequences run through approximately eight weeks of the quarter.
• SELECT: Out of all the assignments completed during the sequences, students then select three to five showcase pieces (at least one of those being a major paper) from these assignments, to be evaluated in the portfolio.
• REFLECT: In their reflection for the portfolio, students assess their own writing in terms of the course outcomes. Students develop their meta-cognition—which research in composition studies has shown to be a skill that transfers to new writing situations—by reflecting on how the selected writing assignments act as “evidence” to showcase their successful demonstration and fulfillment of the course outcomes.

The best reason to use portfolios in the writing classroom is consistency with our belief that revision and reflection are key elements of developing a mindful and effective writing practice. If we teach in a process-based classroom, in which revision is emphasized, then we present our students with a contradiction when we grade individual assignments. Portfolios honor process and revision. Additionally, our students would be likely to receive grades that do not reflect their development over the course of a quarter. For instance, if a student received a 2.5 on the first assignment and 4.0 on her second, her average would be 3.3. But doesn’t the grade on the second assignment suggest that she has come much further in her ability to demonstrate the outcomes? (Though you can focus on what you have taught “so far” when grading, this is often difficult.) By grading primarily on what a student can do at the end of the quarter, we avoid penalizing them for what they weren’t yet able to do at the start of the quarter. Another reason for using portfolios is the opportunity portfolios provide for students to reflect on and assess their performance in light of established learning outcomes; such self-reflection on one’s thinking (or metacognition) is a crucial part of one’s ability to adapt to and write effectively in various contexts. A final reason for using portfolios has to do with our role as coaches rather than as evaluators. Most writing teachers prefer to function as coaches, as composition scholar Peter Elbow calls it. Judging is deferred in a portfolio evaluation curriculum and is instead replaced by guidance and critical feedback throughout the quarter. We will discuss these different types of evaluation in more detail in English 567.

Building the Portfolio: What Does It Include?

Most portfolios have three basic parts:

The Critical Reflection

In a portfolio cover letter (for paper-based portfolios) or reflective web essay (for online portfolio), students use the writing they’ve chosen for evaluation as evidence for arguing how they understand and can perform the course outcomes. The language that students use will come from the course outcomes; without this language students will not know what they are meant to be demonstrating. In this reflective piece, the students show they have a self-awareness of their writing and that they know when and why they are choosing certain strategies. As described above, students develop meta-cognitive skills through these reflections, with which students can use in other writing situations.

In order for students to be ready for the tasks involved in the final portfolio, and the critical reflection in particular, they need opportunities for self-reflection throughout the quarter. We strongly recommend that you plan opportunities for your students to reflect on their successes and failures in relation to the outcomes often and in writing. Reflection is not a transparent task that students will be able to do without instruction and in only one or two nights just before the final portfolio is due. Reflections that punctuate the quarter can serve as the basis for their selections and their explanations in the final reflection; the students will be grateful to have had the time to practice, and your final grading will go more smoothly because students will be more adept at producing what you are asking of them.

Paper-Based and Online Portfolios

In 1997, the PWR began using portfolios as a means of assessment. Currently, instructors have the option of using paper-based or online portfolios through Canvas or other UW tools, such as Google sites. Both options include the same required materials and assessment criteria. At the end of this chapter, we include student instructions for how to complete a paper-based and an online portfolio.

In a paper-based portfolio, students usually present their critical reflection in the form of a portfolio cover letter (approximately three single-spaced pages) following a standard business letter format (sample letters are available on the PWR website). The portfolio then includes the ready-for-evaluation major assignment and two to four shorter assignments, along with their drafts. For a portfolio to be considered complete, it also needs to include all the remaining assignments completed throughout the quarter. Students usually submit their paper-based portfolios in a large manila envelope, binder, or clasped with a clip. (You may specify a standard submission format if you like.) Keep in mind that students should not leave their portfolios in a public space to be picked up later. If you decide to use paper-based portfolios, please establish a time and place when students can drop them off directly to you during office hours or slide them under your office door.

In an online portfolio, students submit all of the same materials they would in a paper-based portfolio via Canvas’s Assignment submission tool. They upload their critical reflection in the form of commentary (the textual equivalent of roughly three single-spaced pages), their revised and ready-for-evaluation major assignment, two to four shorter assignments, and all drafts of all assignments completed over the quarter (this section is referred to as the “Compendium). This option works particularly well if you have collected drafts through Canvas and commented on them electronically throughout the quarter.

Please note that you have the option of asking students to submit some portion of an online portfolio in paper format—a collection of first drafts with hand-written comments from you or peers, for example.

The annotated sample in the PWR Portfolio appendix of Writer/Thinker/Maker is an online portfolio.

There are many benefits, pedagogical and otherwise, of using online, rather than paper-based, portfolios in your class. These benefits include:

• Incorporating multi-media, multi-modal texts (such as PowerPoint, videos, and websites) as part of the portfolio;
• Incorporating aspects of visual rhetoric and design; and
• Widening the audience for the portfolio beyond the instructor, especially for peer review;
• Saving the reams and reams of paper used in the paper-based model (which students generally never pick up after the end of the quarter).
• Using electronic materials generated throughout the quarter decreases the odds of students losing these materials, especially in the case of hand-written feedback from their peers and instructor.

Online Portfolio Templates

There are two ready-made templates of online portfolios that you can choose from. While both of these templates allow students to present a critical reflection alongside a collection of work, they organize the reflection and work differently:

Option 1 — Organized by Outcome: a series of webpages each addressing a specific outcome, and

Option 2 — Organized by Showcase Piece: on a series of webpages each addressing a specific assignment.

Please note that with either template, you have the option of asking students to submit the non-graded (but required) drafts either in paper form or electronically. If asked to submit materials electronically, students may need to scan some of their work in order to capture handwritten comments. However, if you’ve been commenting on students’ work electronically all along using Word’s Comment feature, and your students and you have been using Canvas as a way to turn in work and return it with feedback, students can easily just attach these commented-on electronic drafts into their compendium of work.

1.The Template Organized by Outcome

In the template organized by outcome, the instructions prompt students to consider the homepage as the introduction to the portfolio. In this section, they welcome their reader and provide an introduction to their critical reflection. This is followed by a separate page for each of the four course outcomes in which the student will articulate how the paper(s) attached to each respective outcome are specifically demonstrating and fulfilling that outcome. This approach is helpful if your assignments are designed to focus on one or two outcomes over the others. Here’s what the homepage of a portfolio organized by outcome looks like:

2.The Template Organized by Assignment

This template is similar to the one organized by outcome (the homepage and final reflection are likely identical) but is organized by assignment. In other words, students will specifically discuss how each of the four outcomes are represented within each respective paper. This approach is valuable for it imagines that some aspect of all four outcomes must be present in successful papers.

Responding to Student Writing with Portfolio Evaluation

The differences between responding to a single student draft and the final submission of the portfolio are typically categorized as formative versus summative evaluation. Until the student submits the portfolio, any submitted work counts as a draft and should be read and responded to as a draft. That means the form of the response should be oriented towards questioning, readerly (as opposed to evaluative) responses, and requests for more information and more detail, rather than summative, evaluative responses.

In addition to your responses and feedback during the course, we ask that you build in opportunities for peer response and, as mentioned earlier, for continuing self-assessment/reflection for the writer. The writer’s self-assessment will typically deal with issues of intention: what do they intend for readers to understand? Peer responses may take a variety of forms, but often starting with highly descriptive responses is good policy. Some students see peer responses as their one opportunity to “be the teacher,” often with confusing or even incorrect information. Providing the opportunity to be purely descriptive blunts some of that evaluative tendency and gives the writer a chance to notice how their writerly intention translates into impact on the reader. The preferred schedule of reading has instructors setting a “due date” for a “final” draft of an assignment, subject to further revision for the submission of the final portfolio. Each assignment then has two due dates: one as a draft and one as a final submission in a portfolio (and perhaps both “first draft” and “second draft” dates for major papers or projects). The instructor and/or peers give comments on the draft, anticipating that the student may choose to revise it for the final portfolio. Emphasizing the student’s need to make choices about what to submit as their best work, we discourage instructors from taking that choice out of the student’s hands. If the instructor tells the student how to do everything, there isn’t much opportunity for the student to learn to make decisions and reflect on the outcomes of those decisions.

Grading the Portfolio

The portfolio represents 70% of the student’s course grade. In evaluating the portfolio, instructors should respond as a whole rather than grade assignments separately to arrive at several individual grades that are then averaged. Students are submitting their work as a culmination of the entire quarter’s work and not as separate essays, no matter what form you choose to have them submit the portfolio. Their critical reflections will address the work of the quarter as a body of work, showing how the selected portfolio corresponds to and demonstrates the learning outcomes in the course. In other words, the grading of the portfolios is holistic.

The best reason for not giving students a provisional grade on their drafts is that both the student and you, as the evaluator, are empowered to grade based on growth and effort rather than initial impressions of a student’s writerly capacities. Once you categorize the student as a 3.3 writer (B+), for example, you tend to stick with your original judgment. As a consequence, your student may think they already have a grade slot and won’t try to improve. Alternatively, the student who receives an early 3.7 (A-) may conclude that they don’t need to revise at all.

Though you will likely be adept at responding to drafts by the end of the quarter, you may face a new challenge: assigning grades to the portfolio and to students’ participation. What follows is the portfolio grading rubric we use to evaluate student portfolios. This rubric can help students evaluate their own work, help you assign grades, and help provide some feedback for students regarding what the number grades mean. Before you grade your first set of portfolios towards the end of your first quarter, the PWR director and assistant directors will hold a portfolio grading workshop to help you practice evaluating 131 portfolios.

The portfolio evaluation rubric is used as an assessment tool for both the critical reflection and the selected papers. Using the rubric, instructors assess students on their development and acquisition of skills (the outcomes) at the end of the quarter rather than at the beginning. Even though students are not given grades on their assignment drafts throughout the quarter, they do receive extensive feedback on these drafts. As a result, they have some idea about the areas of their writing that need improvement. As mentioned earlier, feedback on the drafts generally takes the form of reader-response and coaching comments. Judging comments can also be included, but these comments are not connected to a particular grade. In this way, portfolios are effective in emphasizing revision as an important part of the writing process.

Portfolios also most closely resemble a form of assessment that allows for and embodies social constructivism — writing is situated and must be contextualized. Students create their own context for the work in the portfolio because they get to shape their analysis of the assignments (i.e., the context in which they understood the assignment) in their reflection. Further, portfolios respond to the uneven development of individual student learning because assessment doesn’t take place until the end of the quarter (see Carroll).

Students do not receive composition credit for English 131 if they receive below a 2.0. The average grade across all sections is a 3.3.

 

Getting Technical: The Grading Scale

Though the above information is helpful, you’ll find that the UW grading scale provides many choices (some say too many) within the categories listed above. The UW grading scale is as follows (more at this link).

A 4.0-3.9 A- 3.8-3.5 B+ 3.4-3.2 B 3.1-2.9 B- 2.8-2.5 C+ 2.4-2.2 C 2.1-1.9 C- 1.8-1.5 D+ 1.4-1.2 D 1.1-0.9 D- 0.8-0.7 Lowest passing grade. E 0.0 Failure or Unofficial Withdrawal. No credit earned.

This grading scale may be rather different than the grading scale you were graded on (where the lowest C was a 2.0, or where a 3.7 was an A-). You can approach grading your students in a variety of ways. Using the rubric and grading scale above:

• Begin with letter grades. You may find that it is easier for you to identify a “B+” portfolio; then figure out what it should be on the numerical chart. However, this can be tricky, as you have to do some “translating” and are still only left with a range of grades.
• Begin with percentages. This can be useful, though there is again a translation issue, as the scale does not correspond to percentages precisely.
• “Go with numbers.” Try to familiarize yourself with the system and start working directly with the numbers. This will be helpful in 200-level teaching, where portfolios often aren’t used.

A good strategy, especially when first grading, is to put “temporary” grades on the portfolios, making notes for yourself that you can eventually change. Then, you can put the portfolios in order, and look through to see if the progression seems to make sense. Of course, it isn’t a strict progression, but this approach allows you to question yourself (“I gave this a 3.1 and this a 3.1?”) and to identify anomalous grades (often given to good students, bad students, and students at the bottom or top of the pile). Also, you can get a physical look at how many As, Bs, Cs, and Ds you are giving.

Participation Grades

While the portfolio grade represents 70% of the total course grade, 30% is reserved for participation, which can include a wide range of different kinds of activities and practices, all focused on supporting students’ ongoing presence and learning. A review of 99 PWR syllabi from Spring 2022 indicated that 80% of syllabi named class discussions/group work as part of the participation grade and between 40-50% of syllabi reviewed pointed to five other elements: participation in conferences; absences/presences; peer review; informal writing; and assignment completion. It’s important that activities assessed under participation be activities that support students’ engagement with the PWR 100-Level Course Outcomes.

Students should pass the class if they submit the portfolio and all drafts for peer review on time, complete the required number of peer readings, submit all reading logs or journals, complete all required self-assessments and reflections, make use of additional resources (such as the Odegaard Writing and Research Center, the CLUE Writing Center, or the Instructional Center, when necessary), and respond with revision or rethinking to your comments and the comments of their peers. Remember, most students at the University of Washington do not consider a 2.0 (C) a successful grade, nor the “passing” 0.7 (D-), a grade that counts in the grade point average but doesn’t fulfill the Composition Credit general education requirement.

There is great variance in how instructors calculate the participation grade, varying from meticulous record keeping using an online system such as Catalyst’s Grade Book, to eyeballing a sheet of checks. Some tips:

• Decide Your Strategy Early: Early on, you need to decide how you are going to grade the daily assignments your students turn in, such as in-class freewrites, short responses, and questions brought to class. You will also need to keep track of drafts and peer reviews submitted, which factor into the participation grade. Most choose to use a check, check plus, check minus system (or a version of it), and it is a good idea to decide how you plan to translate that into some sort of grade. Though it will be tempting to eyeball the sheet of checks and make an estimate, this will not be helpful if the student contests the grade. Also, you will likely need to keep track of at least two types of participation: (1) the sorts of submitted assignments discussed above, and (2) actual in-class participation. You’ll need to decide how to keep track of the latter: will you mark daily if they participate? weekly? how do office hour visits factor in? e-mail? It’s a good idea to have these things worked out before the end of the quarter.
• Know Your Late Policy (and stick to it): Your late policy, as stipulated in your syllabus, may also play a role in your participation grading. As there are no grades given throughout the quarter, the late policy can be an important “motivating” force—stick to it!
• Keep Your Students Informed: Like with their final grades, students often imagine that their participation grades are higher than they actually are. You can keep them informed by discussing their progress in conference, and also by providing an indication on a draft you’re returning (maybe above their name). This can be as vague as simply indicating a “+”, “ok”, or “-”, or, if you are keeping different sorts of records, you can give some sort of percentage or ballpark grade. Additionally, if you are using Grade Book, you can publish your students’ individual participation grades that they can access throughout the quarter simply by logging into Canvas. You may also want to give some written commentary, such as: “I’d love to hear more from you in class,” “Thanks for participating each day!” or “Attendance is causing many missed daily assignments.” Of course, for problem students, you’ll likely want to discuss problems directly with them.

For more information and discussions of grading, visit the Faculty Resource on Grading (FROG) at http://depts.washington.edu/grading/grading.htm.

Portfolio Assessment Session (Portfolio Day)-Fall Quarter, Finals Week

In the fall quarter of your first quarter teaching, you will need to make your portfolios due by the second day of finals week (at the latest). During finals week of your first quarter, you will attend a four-hour portfolio reading session, in which the PWR Director and ADs support you in assessing your students’ writing portfolios. While we will conduct activities aimed at grade calibration, the ultimate focus, unlike traditional norming sessions, is less on achieving consensus regarding what grade should be granted to a given portfolio and more on helping you better understand the tensions and politics underscoring assessment; articulate your own approach to assessment within the context of your teaching philosophy and organic classroom practices; and navigate tensions among institutional standards, standards within the PWR, and your individual pedagogy. Given the linguistic diversity of PWR classrooms and the socioeconomic factors that impact students’ performance of Standardized Academic English (SAE), the PWR—along with writing programs nationwide—calls to question the strict focus on “correctness” and performance of SAE as the basis of grading. Because the PWR places more emphasis on students’ writing process, revision, and growth, as well as on their refinement of metacognitive/rhetorical awareness as central transferable skills, “norming” final portfolio products for consensus without attention to classroom context risks undermining these aims. The PWR portfolio session seeks to balance the need for communal standards in our writing program with the myriad factors, including variation in instruction, student incomes, and teaching philosophy that might affect assessment.

Discussing the Portfolio with Your Students

The following information provides a more in-depth explanation of portfolios that you can use for handouts that you give to your students at the start of the portfolio sequence. You are free to modify this information as you see fit for the context of your particular class; however, all instructors should clearly identify the requirements for the portfolio—including the learning goals and requirements for paper selection. It is also helpful to provide students with a checklist of the items to include in their portfolios. As you will see, the language of the portfolio rubric is used throughout these two packets to emphasize how the portfolio will be evaluated. (For more sample materials, portfolio prompts, and a useful power point, please consult the PWR website.)

Portfolio Assignment Packet

Portfolio Project Description

The final assignment in English 131 is to create a portfolio of your work, in which you select from, revise, organize, and reflect on your sequence-related writing in relation to the course outcomes. The portfolio is designed not only to allow you the opportunity to demonstrate what you have learned, but also to give you the advantage of being graded on a final proficient product. In this portfolio, you are graded on what you can do at the end of the quarter rather than at the beginning. The final portfolio, then, is a culmination of your efforts and allows you to select the assignments you feel represent your best work in relation to the course outcomes.

In creating a portfolio, you are producing in a new genre. Therefore, you should consider not only your portfolio’s content, but also its visual representation and organization. Just as you would with other genres, you should consider elements of design that are audience appropriate.

Portfolio Project Learning Objectives

The learning objective of the final portfolio is to COLLECT, SELECT, and REFLECT (through a claim-driven argument) on the sequence-related work in relation to the course outcomes. This means you are selecting three to five showcase pieces (including at least one major assignment) from the work you produced this quarter, and constructing an argument about how your selected work is demonstrating and fulfilling the course outcomes.

These outcomes are:

1. To demonstrate an awareness of the strategies that writer’s use in different writing contexts.
2. To read, analyze, and synthesize complex texts and incorporate multiple kinds of evidence purposefully in order to generate and support writing.
3. To produce complex, analytic, persuasive arguments that matter in academic contexts.
4. To develop flexible strategies for revising, editing, and proofreading writing.

Portfolio Project Instructions

The portfolio must include the following:

• Three to five showcase pieces (at least one must be a major paper)
• a critical reflection on these materials;
• and all drafts of your sequence related work.

In your reflection, create a compelling argument about how the selected assignments collectively demonstrate the four course outcomes. In order to support this argument, use evidence from your selected assignments, self-assessments, peer responses, and teacher responses. Quote or paraphrase from these artifacts to connect your work with the course outcomes.

In addition to the materials you select as the basis for your portfolio grade, your portfolio must include all of the sequence-related writing you were assigned in the course (both major papers and all the shorter assignments from both sequences). A portfolio that does not include all the above will be considered “Incomplete” and will earn a grade of 0.0-0.9. The grade for complete portfolios will be based on the extent to which the assignments you select demonstrate the course outcomes. Please see the grading rubric for a more detailed explanation of how portfolios are assessed. The portfolio will be worth 70% of your final grade.

The Portfolio cover page and table of contents

Your portfolio is an assemblage of all of the sequence-related work you’ve done this quarter. In addition, this portfolio showcases the work you feel best represents your learning of the course outcomes, and is accompanied by a critical reflection that argues for how your best work does so. In order to introduce the reader to your work, you will create a cover page and table of contents. This introductory material can take a number of forms. It can be simple and streamlined, or it can be something showier. But no matter how you choose to introduce your reader to your writing portfolio, remember that she or he is seeing it for the first time. What do they need to know? What impression do you want to make? How do you want to guide the reading of your quarter’s best work?

For example, you could organize your table of contexts this way:

• Critical Reflection
• The final forms of your 3-5 showcase pieces (at least one of which is a major paper)
• Previous drafts of the selected pieces with my comments, as well as any peer review sheets
• The rest of the assignments that you have done and attendant peer reviews, in chronological order from the beginning to the end

Remember, like all other genres, portfolios are rhetorical. This means that your organization choices have effects, and therefore you should carefully consider how you want your audience to experience and interact with your compendium of work.

Writing the Critical Reflection

Your critical reflection should be yet one more example of your ability to make claims, to utilize evidence, to analyze that evidence, and to draw pertinent conclusions. Your cover letter functions as a self-assessment of the writing you have done throughout the quarter. Here, you use your own writing as evidence of how you have performed the course outcomes. An outstanding critical reflection clearly indicates which items in the portfolio demonstrate the course outcomes, and makes a compelling argument for how they do so. The critical reflection displays thorough and thoughtful awareness of your own writing. You will incorporate evidence from the course outcomes, assignments, self-assessments, peer responses, and teacher responses. Strategically (and briefly) quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizing passages from your own work (both strong and weak samples) is a great way to make your argument concrete.

In order to accomplish the above goals, your critical reflection should do the following:

• make a claim about how your writing as a whole responds to the requirements in the Portfolio Evaluation Rubric (This is not about making a grade claim, but about making an accomplishments claim);
• identify, analyze, and argue for how your portfolio selections demonstrate key course outcomes. This is successfully done through quoting and analyzing your own work in direct relation to the outcomes and the rubric;
• use the language of the course outcomes, the portfolio rubric, and your own assignments in ways that support your portfolio claim (Remember: You are not describing that you accomplished certain outcomes, but you are arguing for how your work accomplishes the outcomes).

An especially effective way to argue for how your final assignments demonstrate the course outcomes is to compare drafts of your work. This way, you can point to specific parts of your writing where you used teacher or peer comments to make earlier claims, analyses, syntheses, etc. more sophisticated in the final version.

Concluding your Critical Reflection

If there are aspects of the class and of your experience throughout the quarter that you would like to discuss, but haven’t been able to thus far, you might conclude your critical reflection by reflecting on those aspects. Remember, in order for these comments to serve an evaluative function, you should talk about them in relation to the course outcomes or the evaluation rubric. Like any conclusion, there are a number of avenues you can take. Here are some options, but feel free to invent your own:

• summarize how your writing within the entire portfolio represents the progress that you have made throughout the quarter;
• discuss how your portfolio as a whole displays thorough and thoughtful awareness of your own writing processes, habits, and strategies;
• discuss the ways in which your portfolio demonstrates risk-taking, originality, variety, and/or creativity;
• discuss any extra-class activities that enhanced your learning and writing. For example, the number of times that you went to the Writing Center (with dates) or any other tutorial help that you received;
• discuss how you see the work you’ve done this quarter translating to other situations, either in or out of school;
• discuss how you benefited from collaboration with your peers and/ or from conferences.

Selecting Assignments for Portfolio Evaluation

Throughout the quarter, this course has taught concepts of argumentation, development and support, organization, rhetorical choice/awareness, and conventions usage. However, the criteria for selecting essays can be highly subjective. Here are some questions and criteria for judging the qualities of an effective final portfolio paper. Consider these questions for selecting your showcase pieces:

Does the paper satisfy the assignment?

Look at your assignment sheet, look over your draft and instructor and peer comments, and consider whether your paper is on task. Satisfying the assignment also includes using assignment-appropriate conventional formatting and mechanics, and meeting the required length.

Does the paper effectively demonstrate the course outcomes? Which ones?

Part of your selection process should consider what course outcomes are being employed and practiced by the assignment. Take a look at the course outcomes, your assignment prompts, and instructor comments in order to narrow down which paper supports which outcome. Which of the skills or concepts are used, for what purpose, and to what degree? How does your paper demonstrate your understanding of the outcomes and what is the importance of the outcomes to your writing? You will need to choose different assignments to reflect the range and depth of the outcomes.

How much revision does the piece require?

While the ease of revision should not be your sole reason for selecting assignments for your portfolio, you may not want to choose a piece that would require a monumental investment of time and energy. Go with the assignments that stir interest, have a number of positive aspects upon which to build, and received positive feedback from your peers and other readers. Also consider whether you, yourself, are interested in and excited by the topic of that assignment. Why work on something you are not energized about?

Turning in the final portfolio

Please bring your final portfolio to my office [time] on [day and date]. Please indicate if you would like me to return your portfolio with comments. You may turn in your portfolio in a manila envelope or a secure notebook. If you would like me to return your portfolio by mail, you need to turn in a manila envelope along with a SASE (Self-addressed stamped envelope).

Don’t forget to double-check that ALL materials are included. An incomplete portfolio will earn a grade of 0.0-0.9.

Online Portfolio Packet

Portfolio Project Description

The final assignment in English 131 is to create a portfolio of your work, in which you select from, revise, organize, and reflect on your sequence-related writing in relation to the course outcomes. The portfolio is designed not only to allow you the opportunity to demonstrate what you have learned, but also to give you the advantage of being graded on a final proficient product. In this portfolio, you are graded on what you can do at the end of the quarter rather than at the beginning. The final portfolio, then, is a culmination of your efforts and allows you to select the assignments you feel represent your best work in relation to the course outcomes.

In creating an online portfolio, you are producing in a new genre. Therefore you should consider not only your online portfolio’s content, but also its visual representation and organization. Just as you would with other genres, you should consider elements of design that are audience appropriate.

Portfolio Project Learning Objectives

The learning objective of the final portfolio is to COLLECT, SELECT, and REFLECT (through a claim-driven argument) on the sequence-related work in relation to the course outcomes.

These outcomes are:

1. To demonstrate an awareness of the strategies that writer’s use in different writing contexts.
2. To read, analyze, and synthesize complex texts and incorporate multiple kinds of evidence purposefully in order to generate and support writing.
3. To produce complex, analytic, persuasive arguments that matter in academic contexts.
4. To develop flexible strategies for revising, editing, and proofreading writing.

Portfolio Project Instructions*

The portfolio must include the following:

• The final forms of your 3-5 showcase pieces (at least one of which is a major paper)
• a critical reflection on these materials, organized either by assignment or by outcome
• and all of your sequence-related drafts with my feedback collected in a “compendium of work.”

In your reflection, create a compelling argument about how the selected assignments collectively demonstrate the four course outcomes. In order to support this argument, use evidence from assignments, self-assessments, peer responses, and teacher responses. Quote or paraphrase from these artifacts to connect your work with the course outcomes.

In addition to the materials you select as the basis for your portfolio grade, your portfolio must include all of the sequence-related writing you were assigned in the course (both major papers and all the shorter assignments from both sequences). A portfolio that does not include all the above will be considered “Incomplete” and will earn a grade of 0.0-0.9. The grade for complete portfolios will be based on the extent to which the assignments you select demonstrate the course outcomes. Please see the grading rubric for a more detailed explanation of how portfolios are assessed. The portfolio will be worth 70% of your final grade.

*Additional Instructions Are Embedded in your Online Portfolio Template

Creating your Portfolio’s Homepage

Your portfolio is an assemblage of all of the sequence-related work you’ve done this quarter. In addition, this portfolio showcases the work you feel best represents your learning of the course outcomes, and is accompanied by a critical reflection that argues for how your best work does so. In order to introduce the reader to your work, you will create a homepage. This introductory page can take a number of forms. It can be simple and streamlined, or it can be something showier. But, no matter how you choose to introduce your reader to your writing portfolio, remember that she or he is seeing it for the first time. What do they need to know? What impression do you want to make? How do you want to guide the reading of your quarter’s best work?

Writing the Critical Reflection

Your critical reflection should be yet one more example of your ability to make claims, to utilize evidence, to analyze that evidence, and to draw pertinent conclusions. Your critical reflection functions as a self-assessment of the writing you have done throughout the quarter. Here, you use your own writing as evidence of how you have performed the course outcomes. An outstanding critical reflection clearly indicates which items in the portfolio demonstrate the course outcomes, and makes a compelling argument for how they do so. The critical reflection displays thorough and thoughtful awareness of your own writing. You will incorporate evidence from the course outcomes, assignments, self-assessments, peer responses, and teacher responses. Strategically (and briefly) quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizing passages from your own work (both strong and weak samples) is a great way to make your argument concrete.

In order to accomplish the above goals, your critical reflection should do the following:

• make a claim about how your writing as a whole responds to the requirements in the Portfolio Evaluation Rubric (This is not about making a grade claim, but about making an accomplishments claim);
• identify, analyze, and argue for how your portfolio selections demonstrate key course outcomes. This is successfully done through quoting and analyzing your own work in direct relation to the outcomes and the rubric;
• use the language of the course outcomes, the portfolio rubric, and your own assignments in ways that support your portfolio claim (Remember: You are not describing that you accomplished certain outcomes, but you are arguing for how your work accomplishes the outcomes).

An especially effective way to argue for how your final assignments demonstrate the course outcomes is to compare drafts of your work. This way, you can point to specific parts of your writing where you used teacher or peer comments to make earlier claims, analyses, syntheses, etc. more sophisticated in the final version.

Writing the Final Reflection*

If there are aspects of the class and of your experience throughout the quarter that you would like to discuss but haven’t been able to thus far, you might conclude by reflecting on those aspects. Remember, in order for these comments to serve an evaluative function, you should talk about them in relation to the course outcomes or the evaluation rubric. Like any conclusion, there are a number of avenues you can take. Here are some options, but feel free to invent your own:

• summarize how your writing within the entire portfolio represents the progress that you have made throughout the quarter;
• discuss how your portfolio as a whole displays thorough and thoughtful awareness of your own writing processes, habits, and strategies;
• discuss the ways in which your portfolio demonstrates risk-taking, originality, variety, and/or creativity;
• discuss any extra-class activities that enhanced your learning and writing. For example, the number of times that you went to the Writing Center (with dates) or any other tutorial help that you received;
• discuss how you see the work you’ve done this quarter translating to other situations, either in or out of school;
• discuss how you benefited from collaboration with your peers and/ or from conferences.

*Note: In the “Homepage Template,” this section appears as the concluding paragraph of your critical reflection cover letter; in “Template by Outcome and Template by Paper” online portfolio form, this section appears as your “Final Reflection.”

Selecting Assignments for Portfolio Evaluation

Throughout the quarter, this course has taught concepts of argumentation, development and support, organization, rhetorical choice/awareness, and conventions usage. However, the criteria for selecting essays can be highly subjective. Here are some questions and criteria for judging the qualities of an effective final portfolio paper. Consider these questions for selecting short and major papers:

Does the paper satisfy the assignment?

Look at your assignment sheet, look over your draft and instructor and peer comments, and consider whether your paper is on task. Satisfying the assignment also includes using conventional formatting and mechanics, and meeting the required length.

Does the paper effectively demonstrate the course outcomes? Which ones?

Part of your selection process should consider what course outcomes are being employed and practiced by the assignment. Take a look at the course outcomes, your assignment prompts, and instructor comments in order to narrow down which paper supports which outcome. Which of the skills or concepts are used, for what purpose, and to what degree? How does your paper demonstrate your understanding of the outcomes and what is the importance of the outcomes to your writing? You will need to choose different assignments to reflect the range and depth of the outcomes.

How much revision does the piece require?

While the ease of revision should not be your sole reason for selecting assignments for your portfolio, you may not want to choose a piece that would require a monumental investment of time and energy. Go with the assignments that stir interest, have a number of positive aspects upon which to build, and received positive feedback from your peers and other readers. Also consider whether you, yourself, are interested in and excited by the topic of that assignment. Why work on something you are not energized about?

Submitting your Final Portfolio

Please submit your portfolio’s URL to the Portfolio Assignment page on Canvas by midnight on [date]. If you would like me to make comments on your final portfolio, please let me know by choosing to include the “comment” feature in your online portfolio.

Before sending me the URL, make sure that all of your work is accounted for. A portfolio that does not include all of the below mentioned work will be considered “Incomplete” and will earn a grade of 0.0-0.9.

Justifying Portfolios: How to “Sell” Them to Your Students

Initially, students might complain mightily about not receiving any grades until the end of the quarter. Nonetheless, once they understand it is to their advantage to suspend grades until they have had an opportunity to revise on the basis of the entire course, they relax and do the work. Most research has found that students complete more substantial revisions for a portfolio than they do on individually graded assignments. Once students receive detailed comments from their peers and from you, they are often relieved to set aside grade worries.

To reiterate, here are some points that you can make for your students (repeatedly throughout the quarter) that will help them adjust to and understand the importance of using portfolios in 131:

• By using the portfolio, you are grading students on what they can do at the end of the quarter rather than the beginning.
• By not worrying about grades on each assignment, students will have a chance to relax and take risks that they may not otherwise take. This will inevitably result in better writing.
• Your students WILL receive feedback from you, so they will have some idea about the areas that need improvement. Personal and insightful comments from you can be even more indicative of how they’re doing than a letter or number grade.
• Portfolios allow for equitable grading across all sections of English 131 offered by the entire University. As noted earlier, we will be holding a portfolio “norming” session at the end of the first quarter to allow instructors to grade consistently across 131 sections. You can, for example, see how other instructors would grade a portfolio you were considering to be very strong. If you give your students grades throughout the quarter, and it turns out that you were a much more generous grader than your fellow instructors and feel that you should modify your grades accordingly, your students will be very upset.

If you “sell” the portfolio system at the beginning of the quarter, many students do get to feel comfortable with the system and can focus on their process and progress rather than their grades. In her 2002 study of 131 student evaluations (see Chapter 11), Amy Vidali found that only 2.5% of students felt that the lack of grades during the quarter detracted from their experiences in 131. If you do have anxious students, there are a few ways you can address them, beyond the four points above:

• Since revision is a major component of the outcomes, and therefore a major part of their final grade, there is no way you will be able to predict their grade until they turn in their portfolios.
• You can give them information about their participation grade, and even a specific participation grade if they so insist.
• You can tell students that if you feel they are in danger of earning less than a 2.0 by the final week of the add/drop period (if, for example, they have missed a large number of classes and work), you will let them know in time for them to drop the class.

Further Reading

Carroll, Lee Ann. Rehearsing New Roles: How College Students Develop As Writers. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2002.

Reynolds, Nedra, and Richard Aaron Rice. Portfolio Teaching: A Guide for Instructors. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006.

Yancey, Kathleen Blake, and Irwin Weiser. Situating Portfolios: Four Perspectives. Logan: Utah State UP, 1997.