The Final Portfolio Project

As you know, there is no final exam in this course. Instead, your last major project is to prepare and submit a Final Portfolio that showcases what you’ve learned this semester. It may be useful to think of your final portfolio as a single document composed of several parts that all work together to argue how you have succeeded in accomplishing the major goals of this class. In other words, one of the underlying assumptions of this course has been that writing is a complex process and that it often takes a lot of time, energy, and thought—as well as a willingness to take some chances—to do well. Your final portfolio is your opportunity to revisit some or all of the work you have done in this class one last time and to apply all that you have learned to a final set of revisions.

Getting Started: The purpose of this final portfolio is not only to reflect on all that you have learned over the past fifteen weeks but also to document your improvement and to show that you have successfully met all of the expectations outlined in the syllabus. Thus, your first step will be to choose two projects you wish to include in your portfolio, keeping in mind that your ultimate goal is not only to produce the best final documents that you can, but also to demonstrate that you have met most, if not all, of the learning outcomes specified for this course. That is, we stated on the first day of the semester that at the successful completion of ENG 101, each student would be able to:

See that writing is a form of social interaction;
Analyze rhetorical situations and make effective choices based on audience and context;
Responsibly synthesize material from a variety of sources;
Make claims and support them with appropriate evidence;
Use writing to critically explore, explain, evaluate, and reflect on your experiences and on those of others;
Understand and effectively use a range of genres/forms;
Use conventions of expression appropriate to situation and audience;
Effectively revise and provide substantive feedback to others on their writing;
Articulate a revision strategy based on an understanding of your own writing processes;
Recognize the importance of technology in research, writing, and other forms of social interaction.

You will want to select two projects you wish to revise—one project to revise strategically and one that you will edit and polish (One of these essays must be either your analytical response or your analytical argument.). You should expect tospend several hours revising the essay you choose to strategically revise, carefully reconsidering the comments you received on your drafts, as well as some of the key concepts and strategies you have learned from our textbook,and your own thoughts and experiences in the class.

Next, you will need to write a reflective essay that you submit along with your revisions that explains why you have chosen to revise each of the documents in your portfolio, everything that has gone into this revision process, and precisely what these finished documents say about the things you have learned this semester. That is, you will need to write at some length (and in specific detail) about how the learning outcomes listed above both influenced and are reflected in the other documents in your portfolio. In other words, your cover letter needs to make an argument regarding your writing and learning outcomes, using your revisions as evidence to back up your claims.

Rhetorical Considerations: Because the goal of your portfolio is to showcase all that you’ve accomplished this semester, your reflective essay combined with your revisions need to provide enough specific evidence to persuade me to consider your writing and learning in a specific light. Thus, in addition to reflecting on some of the most significant things you have learned about writing this semester, you will probably want to write in your reflective essay about how you learned whatever it is that you feel has helped you. That is, you should talk about specific exercises or activities you did in class, ideas or strategies you gained through course readings, any help you received while visiting the Writing Center or working with someone outside of class, and anything else you may have gotten from class discussions or from working with your peers that contributed substantially to your success.

Keep in mind that the term “revision” literally means “to see again.” You’ll want to put a lot of thought into the papers you are revising, and you’ll want these revisions to demonstrate that you have made improvement in your writing and thinking in this course. Indeed, perhaps the worst mistake someone can make on a project like this would be to submit a paper largely unchanged from its original form. Not only does this send the wrong signal (that you either don’t care or haven’t learned very much), but is also a tremendous waste of a rather unique educational opportunity: to re-engage the material of the course with a new perspective. The essay you choose to polish should show that you paid close attention to style and language, and the essay you choose to strategically revise strategically should represent your best attempts to “re-see” the piece.

Your final portfolio will be the last thing I read before calculating your final average in this course, so you will want to make sure that it reflects your best efforts in all ways.

Putting It Together: At a minimum, your Final Portfolio must contain the items below:

Revisions of two essays you completed this semester (remember that you must include either the analytical response or the analytical argument as one of your revised essays);
The original graded copies of the papers you are revising, with any notes, sketches, drafts, or other material that represents stages in the development of these projects; and
Areflective essay that explains in detail why you chose to revise each of the documents in your portfolio and argues precisely what these revised documents show about the things you have learned this semester.

You will need to submit your final portfolio via BB as one document. Please let me know if you have questions regarding how to combine your documents. You will submit your earlier, graded drafts as separate documents. All final portfolios must be submitted to me electronically via BB by [Insert date and time].

You will also submit a hard copy of your portfolio in a folder (not a binder) to me by [insert date and time here]. It should be organized in a way that makes it easy to follow (for example, you will want to clearly label your revisions as revisions, to distinguish them from notes, drafts, and other documents in your folder; etc.). If you have chosen to include additional work in your portfolio, please make sure that it is clearly labeled as such. Please note that you may not place your portfolio in my box or submit it to office staff. In addition, late portfolios will not be accepted.

ENG 101/Final Portfolio