Final Portfolio

CAS WR 098

Due by class time on April 29, uploaded to Blackboard as a single electronic document (such as Word document or Digication link).

PURPOSE: This assignment asks you to present your best work and demonstrate your learning in an organized portfolio. In a portfolio you

  • organize and introduce your own work, making and defending claims about its value to you as a student, researcher, and writer.
  • describe and evaluate reading, research, and writing strategies or skills that you can transfer to other courses.
  • present polished essays.
  • practice thinking rhetorically; that is, you develop effective writing habits, meet an audience beyond me and your classmates, arrange your evidence, and make appeals based on reason.

ASSIGNMENT:

Your Final Portfolio should exhibit 7-10 items. You must include the following 5 items:

  • Table of Contents
  • Introduction (at least 500 words; see specific prompts below)
  • Scanned draft (with all of my feedback) of Analytical Summary
  • Draft version of Paper 3 (make sure to save this as a separate document at some point during your writing process)
  • Final version of Paper 3

You might also include any of the following items:

  • Supporting evidence of writing process (for example--drafts, outlines, reading notes, other drafts with teacher or peer feedback, Mid-Semester Self-Reflection, comments you wrote before submitting papers, etc.).

How to create a portfolio:

  1. Collect

The first step to assembling a portfolio is to collect your work from the semester so far, including notes (reading and in-class), outlines, working problem statements, reading, drafts, peer responses, and final essays. Readings, handouts, and assignment sheets should also be gathered.

  1. Select

Your portfolio will include finished essays as well as supporting material that demonstrates your writing process (notes, drafts, peer responses, and working bibliographies, among others). These are the “artifacts” of your portfolio, the exhibits that will occasion and substantiate your claims. Select your artifacts carefully. You will want to limit yourself to presenting the amount of evidence you think will best help your reader see your process without overwhelming her.

You will want to organize your portfolio in a way that helpfully evidences your introductory essay. The structure of your portfolio, much like the structure of any argument, should support the claims in your introduction. Perhaps you will organize your portfolio by your process (from notes to outline to finished essay); perhaps by theme or research question; perhaps by course goal; perhaps by some other framework, to be determined by you.

3. Reflect

In a coherent, cohesive essay, introduce your portfolio. Your essay will document and evaluate your work in this course, present your portfolio publicly to your peers and to your teachers, and guide your readers to the important artifacts.

Consider the course goals as well as your personal goals for your scholarly writing. In your introduction to the essay, articulate a claim that assesses the progress you made in your scholarly writing. The rest of your essay will elaborate and defend the claim through the presentation and interpretation of artifacts. In other words, quote or paraphrase your own work to substantiate your claims. There is no need to provide citations for your own work.

In your Introduction, you must include the following considerations:

  • Detail the revisions you’ve made as you've worked on Paper 3 and the improvements and changes that you want readers to notice. Explain and analyze some of the repeated errors you’ve been working to avoid and the types of revisions that benefited you. You should cite your peers’ and my responses to your work to support your self-assessment. Point to specific advice or techniques that you learned from the course. (At least 300 words).

In your Introduction, you might do the following:

  • Summarize or quote from your Mid-Semester Self-Reflection (up to 100 words).
  • Explain how you have been working toward the course goals listed on the first page of the syllabus.
  • Acknowledge your weaknesses, but show how you’ve worked to overcome them.
  • Reflect on what you’ve learned about formulating theses and organizing arguments.
  • Demonstrate what this portfolio illustrates about you as a reader, writer, student, researcher or critical thinker. How have your practices and habits of reading, writing, and organizing changed or evolved?
  • Explain how you have consciously imitated at least one author. You might detail specific features of their writing that you admire. See class handouts and/or your handbook for specific considerations such as diction, figures of speech, word choice, emotion, imagery, parallelism, and so on. You could also give an example of at least one sentence from your own writing that imitates a specific sentence from another author (quote the model sentence).

Comments:

  • Title your portfolio introduction.
  • Each artifact should serve a purpose in the argument you’re making about the portfolio, and should be mentioned in your Introduction.
  • You may hand-number your portfolio if it is easier.