Last Updated: January 2014

UALR Composition Program: Digital Portfolio Assignment

Your final project will be assembling your work throughout the semester into a final portfolio. A portfolio, in other words, is a meaningful collection of selected artifacts or documents, collected over time and across interests. Portfolios have become a common method of evaluating and assessing student work in writing classes because they provide a more thorough and authentic picture of a writers developing skills. (Reynolds and Rice, 2014, p. 1). A significant portion of your final grade in this course will come from your portfolio, as such you will begin working on the portfolio at the beginning of the semester. Throughout the semester, your portfolio will assist you in understanding and assessing your own learning. Portfolios are great for opening doors but the most important audience for your portfolio is you. Keeping a portfolio will help you pay attention to both the processes and products of writing. It also will help you track the evolution of each writing project and your development as a writer (Reynolds and Rice, 2006, p. 2). By the end of the semester, you should understand both the recursive nature of writing and how you achieved (or didnt) the Writing Program Administrators (WPA) outcomes throughout the course. Throughout the semester, your portfolio will be a learning portfolio where you reflect the journey more so than the destination (Reynolds and Rice, 2006, p. 3). However, by the end of the semester your portfolio will be an evaluation portfolio that shifts attention at a certain point from the learning process to the product of that process (Reynolds and Rice, 2006, p. 4).

Objectives
Your final digital portfolio should demonstrate your understanding of the Writing Program Administrators Outcomes Statement (WPA OS) through a clear, concise, and cohesive reflective argument. In your argument, you will marshal evidence to support your argument directly by featuring the work you have completed in this course. Materials you can use as evidence to support your argument may include (but is not limited to): in-class activities/writing, class materials, peer revisions, drafts of major composition projects, reflective essays, journals entries, and anything else that aided in your learning.

Requirements
Landing Page: One page addressing the following information: Author information Rhetorical Situation Purpose Overview -

Based on Jasmine WIlliams and Bethany Mays course material, modified by Joshua Johnson.

Last Updated: January 2014

WPA Outcomes Statement: For your portfolio, you will explain how you have fulfilled each of the five WPA outcomes. You must include at least all of your major projects in your reflection. Your goal is to construct an argument in response to the WPA OS reflecting on your learning experience that is backed by evidence from materials you have produced in conjunction with your learning experience. Evidence: You may use one piece of evidence per outcome or provide numerous pieces of evidence to support one outcome. For example, you may choose to use project three to illustrate how you composed in electronic environments, but you may find that critical thinking is best explained using your reflective blogs and a reflective essay you wrote for another class. You may also choose to use screenshots of online materials you created. Structure: Regardless of which pieces or how many pieces of evidence you use to support each outcome, your portfolio must have a logical organization that is easy to navigate. One example is to have an outcome page for each outcome that includes the name of the outcome, the bulleted list explaining each outcome, and two to four paragraphs explaining why you chose specific pieces of your work and how they represent your learning of that particular outcome.

Portfolio Checklist
Home Page (with profile information about yourself) A logical organization Examples and explanations of your skills that demonstrate your achievement of the WPA outcomes Any blogs or in-class writings that demonstrate your skills Reflection, evaluation, and analysis of your learning (using the WPA outcomes) Final copies of your writing projects

Privacy
You will be allowed to choose from a variety of web sites to construct your portfolio. Please be mindful that each site comes with its own privacy guidelines regarding if or how a page may be made private. While some sites allow measures such as setting entire sites to private or securing pages with passwords, many sites will not have those features. It is your responsibility to thoroughly research and be informed of your sites policies. I will not require you to make your site public or share any of your work outside of the domain of this department. I will show you selected sites and security features for those sites. If you feel any hesitance about using a particular site or are unsure of its policies, I advise you to use Google sites associated with your UALR account, which you can choose to share only people at UALR with the URL.

Based on Jasmine WIlliams and Bethany Mays course material, modified by Joshua Johnson.

Last Updated: January 2014

WPA Outcomes Statement

Rhetorical Knowledge Focus on a purpose Respond to the needs of different audiences Respond appropriately to different kinds of rhetorical situations Use conventions of format and structure appropriate to the rhetorical situation Adopt appropriate voice, tone, and level of formality Understand how genres shape reading and writing Write in several genres Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing Use writing and reading for inquiry, learning, thinking, and communicating Understand a writing assignment as a series of tasks, including finding, evaluating, analyzing, and synthesizing appropriate primary and secondary sources Integrate their own ideas with those of others Understand the relationships among language, knowledge, and power Processes Be aware that it usually takes multiple drafts to create and complete a successful text Develop flexible strategies for generating, revising, editing, and proof-reading Understand writing as an open process that permits writers to use later invention and rethinking to revise their work Understand the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes Learn to critique their own and others' works Learn to balance the advantages of relying on others with the responsibility of doing their part Use a variety of technologies to address a range of audiences Knowledge of Conventions Learn common formats for different kinds of texts Develop knowledge of genre conventions ranging from structure and paragraphing to tone and mechanics Practice appropriate means of documenting their work Control such surface features as syntax, grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Composing in Electronic Environments Use electronic environments for drafting, reviewing, revising, editing, and sharing texts Locate, evaluate, organize, and use research material collected from electronic sources, including scholarly library databases; other official databases (e.g., federal government databases); and informal electronic networks and internet sources Understand and exploit the differences in the rhetorical strategies and in the affordances available for both print and electronic composing processes and texts

Based on Jasmine WIlliams and Bethany Mays course material, modified by Joshua Johnson.

Last Updated: January 2014

From: http://wpacouncil.org/positions/outcomes.html

Timeline
You must have checkpoints listed throughout the semester so you can monitor student progress. This project is not to be completed the last two weeks of class; students should be working on this project throughout the entire semester. Example timeline: January 15th/April 25th: Introduction/Reintroduction of the project and discussion of the learning outcomes January 22nd: Beginning portfolio due in website form February 14th: Add Project 1 Rough draft to your electronic portfolio February 21st: Add Project 1 Revised draft(s) to your electronic portfolio March 7th: Add Project 2 Rough draft to your electronic portfolio March 21st: Add Project 2 Revised draft(s) to your electronic portfolio April 18th: Add Project 3 Rough draft to your electronic portfolio April 25th: Add Project 3 Revised draft(s) to your electronic portfolio April 28th-May 2nd: In class work days for electronic portfolio and instructor conferences May 5th: Electronic Portfolio due

Rubric (TBA)

Based on Jasmine WIlliams and Bethany Mays course material, modified by Joshua Johnson.