ePortfolio

ePortfolio Rules and Guidebook from the Writing and Communication Program

Banner created by my former ENGL 1102 student, Kelly Lin, of the Literature, Media, and Communications Program

Note: I use the terms ePortfolio, Final Portfolio, and Portfolio interchangeably.

Another Note: This page is meant to give you a few things to consider and help, however, the most detailed guide and set of materials for this portfolio, how to submit content, import certain media, images, and papers, may be found in the link here and also just above.

Goals and Learning Outcomes

Multimodality: develop competence in major communication modalities (WOVEN) and understand that modalities work synergistically.

Process: use recursive strategies, including planning, drafting, critiquing, revising, presenting, and reflecting confidently.

Analysis: draw connections among ideas, support assertions with evidence and arguments; identify patterns via close and careful attention.

WOVEN

Written Communication: Composition of original reflection documents and the and assembly and narration of various reflection activities, process documents, and and introduction to major artifacts.

Electronic Communication: Created in and through the limitations and allowances of Canvas's portfolio builder.

Prompt

Provide a collection of your major projects throughout this semester. In addition, you will narrate your processes, improvements, and challenges in communication, meeting assignment goals and how you achieved course learning outcomes, synthesizing content we've already built throughout the semester.

Argument or Purpose

Discuss your experience in this class, especially in terms of overall goals or learning outcomes, using examples from your major projects to support those assertions about your writing and compositional development.

Audience

Your professor and other first-year writing program instructors and directors attempting to gauge your progress in terms of rhetorical awareness, articulate communication across various mediums, and achievement of major course goals set forth by the University. Your audience values four things that should determine how you write, compose, and polish this work: 

Humanity: We want to see that a human is composing this. That means that you articulate strengths and weaknesses, challenges, difficulties, and triumphs, especially in sections where you are trying to build sympathy and alliance with the reader like the Reflection Essay and the Introductions to each Artifact. Often, this manifests as a personalized theme that relates to writing.

Brevity: "shortness of duration, especially shortness or conciseness of expression" (Merriam Webster) Get to the point! 

Simplicity: "the state of being ... uncomplicated, uncompounded" with a "directness of expression" (Merriam Webster). Don't belabor the point or spend time on irrelevant content. 

Clarity: "the quality of being easily understood" and "a lack of marks, spots, or blemishes" (Merriam Webster). Explain the relationship between your theme and composition generally, while presenting work that is free of spelling, grammatical, or design errors that shows evidence of careful proofreading.

Defining Features

See the link here, but basically:

(1) A Reflective Essay (1,000 to 1,500 words) that reflects on the overall experience of the course, establishes a theme related to writing (that you can use to 'weave' the portfolio together in each Artifact's Introduction), and a narrative thread of development, growth, and meta-cognitive development that briefly previews how each artifact 'fits in' within the overall portfolio.

(2) Page for Artifact 0, which will include, in this order: a (a) brief introduction to the artifact, (b) the final version of that artifact, (c) a set of process documents that demonstrate your composition, editing, brainstorming capabilities as part of a communicative process, and a (d) final reflection.

(3) A Page for Artifact 1, which will include, in this order: a (a) brief introduction to the artifact, (b) the final version of that artifact, (c) a set of process documents that demonstrate your composition, editing, brainstorming capabilities as part of a communicative process, and a (d) final reflection.

(4) A Page for Artifact 2, which will include, in this order: a (a) brief introduction to the artifact, (b) the final version of that artifact, (c) a set of process documents that demonstrate your composition, editing, brainstorming capabilities as part of a communicative process, and a (d) final reflection.

(5) A Page for Artifact 3, which will include, in this order: a (a) brief introduction to the artifact, (b) the final version of that artifact, (c) a set of process documents that demonstrate your composition, editing, brainstorming capabilities as part of a communicative process, and a (d) final reflection.

You may view a Portfolio I built at this link. This portfolio shows overall structure, but not the particulars of content. Keep in mind that throughout this example I use "lorem ipsum" as placeholder content where general writing and reflection would occur. 

Additionally, when creating the Portfolio, never use the content pane "Course Submission." It is ugly. It looks terrible. Do not use it. Instead, copy and paste the original content into a "Rich Text Content" pane or embed the content like this. 

And, if you just submit a link to a pdf or Google page, I will not count that as completed content, and will deduct accordingly. Everything should be readily visible on the portfolio page itself. 

Using the ePortfolio Site

I have provided a Youtube video to help with each part of the portfolio. Within these two videos, I have provided links to specific times relevant to certain aspects for your ease and clarity.

Creating, Submitting, Editing, and Using the Panes in your ePortfolio.

HTML / Embed Content Pane Guide - Use this instead of uploading files for me to download and instead of the Course Submission Pane. 

You may view a Portfolio I built at this link. This portfolio shows overall structure, but not the particulars of content. Keep in mind that throughout this example I use "lorem ipsum" as placeholder content where general writing and reflection would occur. 

WARNING: Make sure to select "Save Page" when editing pages or considering moving between pages. Canvas does not automatically save content unless you manually select "Save Page." Please write your content out in a locally saved document before importing it to Canvas. 

Helpful Assignments Guide

In this section, I provide some journal assignments that you have (hopefully) completed that you may freely reference and use to bring everything together. Never ever use the "Course Submission" content pane when importing this content. You will probably need to take some of these notes and reflections and 'clean them up,' since much of the content created here was done in a more 'informal' style or a more 'private' and 'writer-based' prose. Turn that content into something appropriate for first year composition students and instructors. It is not a requirement that you use the journals you've already written here, but it does make things easier. 

These are journals and assignments you may draw from to complete these parts below, but you do not have to only use those journal reflections within the sections listed below. 

In the process sections below, the assignments you or your group completed are laid out generally chronologically and in a logical order to help you narrate a start-to-finish process. But, keep in mind, as you provide that content to your reader, you will need to 'frame' it. That means: set our expectations going into reading that assignment. So, if you begin your process section in Artifact 0 with the Artifact 0 Script, you would first tell us in a sentence or two how you approached writing a script, what you considered, and important points you sought to hit. You do not want to have content that is just copy-pasted into the portfolio, otherwise your reader will not be able to follow you.

Reflective Essay

WOVEN Reflection Assignment, Artifact 0 Script

What Is Writing Like? and Goals and Learning In-Class Prompts (11/28)

For Individual Artifact Entries, synthesize aspects of the Artifact 0, 1, 2, and 3 Reflections and/or the final questions 

Artifact 0 Page

Note: We completed much of this in class on Day 3. 

a) Introductory Essay: WOVEN Reflection Assignment

b) Final Artifact 0: Artifact 0 Final Assignment (submit as an embedded video. Follow the instructions here for embedding from Youtube)

c) Process: Artifact 0 Script Assignment

d) Reflection: Artifact 0 Reflection Assignment

Artifact 1 Page

a) Introductory Essay: Bechdel Response Assignment, Memoir Readings Impressions Assignment, or reflection question #6 in the [Optional] Artifact 1 Revision Opportunity.

b) Final Artifact 1: Artifact 1 Final Assignment or the revised version submitted as part of the [Optional] Artifact 1 Revision Opportunity, if you took the second option. 

c) Process: Consider Synthesizing the Memoir Readings Impressions Assignment, Bechdel Response Assignment, the Wright Response Assignment, or the Memoir Presentation Activity Assignment to consider how it informed your approach to your own memoir. Memoir Presentation Activity Assignment, ReWrite Activity Assignment, Artifact 1 Peer Review Assignment (The version of Artifact 1 you submitted for peer review), or Generalized reflections from the reflection portion of the "[Optional] Artifact 1 Revision Opportunity" Assignment.

d) Reflection: Artifact 1 Reflection Assignment

Artifact 2 Page

a) Reflection Essay: Draw from reflection question #6 in the [Optional] Revision Opportunity for Artifact 2

b) Final Artifact 2: Artifact 2 Final or the version submitted as part of completing Option 2 of the [Optional] Revision Opportunity for Artifact 2 Assignment.

c) Process: Artifact 2 Monument Selection Assignment, Artifact 2 Monument Reflection Assignment, Infographic Selection and Analysis Assignment, Artifact 2 Peer Review Assignment, Artifact 2 Peer Review Reflection Assignment, or a generalized version of the reflection portion of the [Optional] Revision Opportunity for Artifact 2 Assignment.

d) Reflections: Artifact 2 Reflection

Artifact 3 Page

a) Reflection Essay: Collaboration Reflection (Individual) Assignment

b) Final Artifact 3: Artifact 3 Final Assignment. Or, an embedded Youtube Video link, Soundcloud link, an uploaded mp3, mp4, or wav file and the descriptors and icons.

c) Process: Artifact 3 Collaboration Contract (Group) Assignment, Article Summary (Individual), Podcast Genre Presentation (Group) Assignment, or the Podcast Proposal (Group) Assignment. 

d) Final Reflection: Artifact 3 Reflection (Individual) Assignment

Deadlines

Final Portfolio Due for all sections by the final day of class on December 5 at the 'end' of class. So, if classtime normally ends for you at 9:15 AM, then your portfolio is also due by 9:15 AM. 

Reminder: In the first and second week of class, we went ahead and created your portfolio, as well as the pages for each artifact, and submitted the link to your portfolio it in the Assignment for Final Portfolio. You do not need to resubmit the link if you've submitted it already, unless you deleted that initial link. And, you are free to edit until the time it is due. Some of you, however, did not submit the link when I requested it. So, make sure you've submitted a link before the due date and time. 

After that point, as per Georgia Tech policy, you may not edit after that due date and time. Doing so would constitute a form of cheating and a violation of the honor code. 

There is no extension log available for this assignment.

Grading

The Portfolio is worth 10% of your final grade in this course. 

Within each Portfolio, I grade each page individually:

• 30% to Reflection Essay

• 10% to Artifact 0

• 20% to Artifact 1

• 20% to Artifact 2

• 20% to Artifact 3

You will not receive feedback on this Final Portfolio.