Spring Quarter, 2010

Portfolio Project

Audience: Instructor, classmates, WRD Department staff, and DePaul University assessment staff
Genre: Organized showcase, with a 750-word reflective essay, of your WRD104 projects
Platform — your choice: iWeb, Acrobat Pro 9, or WordPress

Necessary elements in your portfolio:

Your portfolio’s organizing principle
We discussed in class three possible models for organizing your work:

[1] The “Being my own Filter” model, which is based on our week one discussion of the influence that technology has on our teaching and learning. Some people claim that teachers no longer serve as “filters” for information and knowledge. You could frame your portfolio, then, on the ways in which you found, analyzed, and synthesized appropriate primary and secondary sources, marshaling those resources in the service of audience-based argument or advocacy.

[2] Focusing on your writing, revising, editing, and feedback processes: how did you plan, discuss, write, revise, edit, and present your projects? What kinds of choices and decisions did you make in your writing and editing? How did you marshal your resources in the service of audience-based argument or advocacy?

[3] WRD Outcomes model: using the WRD Learning Outcomes for First-Year Writing, you could organize your work around those headings — Rhetorical Knowledge, Critical Thinking, Reading and Writing, Processes, Knowledge of Conventions — to organize the work you’ve done, while showing how you marshaled your resources in the service of audience-based argument or advocacy.

Due Date: TBA

 Background: from the Handbook for First-Year Writing

The student writing portfolio. As a cornerstone of our pedagogy, the student writing portfolio provides the opportunity for students to demonstrate the degree to which they have achieved the program’s learning outcomes. Writing portfolios are required of every student in every FYW course and necessitate that students keep track of their work (collection), take responsibility for selecting pieces of their writing that represent their achievements (selection), and reflect on their own work in the course (reflection). In this way, students are accountable for their choices; they must consider what they have and haven’t learned; and they must come to grips with their role in this learning.

Assessment: The portfolio should be assessed according to the following criteria:

  • Does the student understand the goals of the course and can he/she talk about them competently? Does the student understand what makes writing good?
  • Can the student write clearly and competently about his/her own writing?
  • Does the evidence in the portfolio support the conclusions/assertions made in the reflective letter?

A well-written reflective essay with partial or missing support in the portfolio will not receive a high grade, nor will a poorly written reflective letter with good support.

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