Project 4: Portfolio Writer’s Role: Evaluator Audience: UA Students, Your Current and Subsequent Writing Instructor Genre: Portfolio Due Dates: · Wednesday, Nov. 30th: Portfolio Idea Proposal · Monday, Dec. 5th: First Draft of Portfolio · Friday, Dec. 9th: Final Portfolio due via d2l by 7:59 AM The goal of this final portfolio is to reflect on and demonstrate your learning in this course. Kathleen Yancey, an expert in reflective writing, says writers need to know their work before they can like or critique it. Applying what we’ve learned to subsequent (and different) writing contexts depends on taking time to assess your writing practices. Evaluating your progress in English 101, it follows, should convince readers that you know your work and you can reflect on and assess your writing experiences. Project 4, as a portfolio, allows you to document your performance in this class by examining what you’ve produced this semester in relation to some of the student learning outcomes. So, too, the course has emphasized key terms that represent core concepts in writing, and they will be useful vocabulary for explaining what you’ve learned about writing. Course Key Terms · Audience · Purpose · Context · Genre · Community · Rhetorical situation Before beginning your portfolio, then, it is important to carefully read over the learning outcomes and key terms (as we have been doing throughout the semester). Decide which outcomes and key terms you would like to highlight; in the reflective essay, you will explain how learning is demonstrated (or areas in which you still need to improve) in the artifacts you’ve curated to represent your writing. Portfolio Requirements Task #1: Curate Portfolio Artifacts. An important part of reflection involves reviewing and selecting samples of your writing across the semester. “Any writing” means anything you’ve written for English 101. It might be notes you made in class. It might be all of the major assignments with rough drafts. It might be one or two homework assignments that you felt had a big influence on your learning this semester. It could even be all of the homework assignments put together in a way that you think demonstrates learning outcomes. Of course, learning is not always captured in successes. While you will predominately select writing that illustrates success in learning outcomes in the portfolio, you will also select at least one instructive failure, one example of writing that represents an outcome you have struggled with and will continue to work on. Often a critical incident with writing, or an instructive failure, prompts the best learning. With that in mind, use the following guidelines to curate a portfolio: · Select artifacts that demonstrate mastery of one or two learning outcomes in each goal (see below). Remember, any writing you did for class counts. · Select one artifact that represents your struggle with one learning outcome. · Design a table of contents (TOC) with clear titles.

1. Project 4: Portfolio
Writer’s Role: Evaluator
Audience: UA Students, Your Current and Subsequent Writing
Instructor
Genre: Portfolio
Due Dates:
· Wednesday, Nov. 30th: Portfolio Idea Proposal
· Monday, Dec. 5th: First Draft of Portfolio
· Friday, Dec. 9th: Final Portfolio due via d2l by 7:59 AM
The goal of this final portfolio is to reflect on and demonstrate
your learning in this course. Kathleen Yancey, an expert in
reflective writing, says writers need to know their work before
they can like or critique it. Applying what we’ve learned to
subsequent (and different) writing contexts depends on taking
time to assess your writing practices. Evaluating your progress
in English 101, it follows, should convince readers that you
know your work and you can reflect on and assess your writing
experiences. Project 4, as a portfolio, allows you to document
your performance in this class by examining what you’ve
produced this semester in relation to some of the student
learning outcomes. So, too, the course has emphasized key
terms that represent core concepts in writing, and they will be
useful vocabulary for explaining what you’ve learned about
writing.
Course Key Terms
· Audience
· Purpose
· Context
· Genre
· Community
· Rhetorical situation

2. Before beginning your portfolio, then, it is important to
carefully read over the learning outcomes and key terms (as we
have been doing throughout the semester). Decide which
outcomes and key terms you would like to highlight; in the
reflective essay, you will explain how learning is demonstrated
(or areas in which you still need to improve) in the artifacts
you’ve curated to represent your writing.
Portfolio Requirements
Task #1: Curate Portfolio Artifacts.
An important part of reflection involves reviewing and selecting
samples of your writing across the semester. “Any writing”
means anything you’ve written for English 101. It might be
notes you made in class. It might be all of the major
assignments with rough drafts. It might be one or two
homework assignments that you felt had a big influence on your
learning this semester. It could even be all of the homework
assignments put together in a way that you think demonstrates
learning outcomes.
Of course, learning is not always captured in successes. While
you will predominately select writing that illustrates success in
learning outcomes in the portfolio, you will also select at least
one instructive failure, one example of writing that represents
an outcome you have struggled with and will continue to work
on. Often a critical incident with writing, or an instructive
failure, prompts the best learning. With that in mind, use the
following guidelines to curate a portfolio:
· Select artifacts that demonstrate mastery of one or two
learning outcomes in each goal (see below). Remember, any
writing you did for class counts.
· Select one artifact that represents your struggle with one
learning outcome.
· Design a table of contents (TOC) with clear titles for artifacts
with links to each.

3. · Provide clear Headings/Titles in the TOC
· Use Headings to help with organization of artifacts
· Insert links in the TOC for quick access to artifacts
When necessary, you may need to scan handwritten material or
take a picture and save the image. Be sure to design the
document for readability. You may opt to combine all artifacts
into a single document (Microsoft Word). No matter how you
archive, use specific Headings for each artifact, which you will
reference in the table of contents and in Task #2 (Reflection
Essay).
Task #2: Compose a reflection on your writing experiences
Write a Reflective Essay that (a) describes your writing using
some of the key terms this semester in relation to the Student
Learning Outcomes and (b) evaluates selected artifacts as
examples of learning in these areas. This reflective essay will
be the main part of your portfolio. It should focus on the
learning outcomes and a discussion of your writing in relation
to them. It is important to keep in mind that a strong reflective
essay does not need to argue that you have achieved all of the
learning outcomes. (Remember, we expect that you achieve
these learning outcomes by the end of English 102 or 108, not
now.) A strong reflective essay demonstrates an understanding
of one’s own writing and an ability to describe various writing
experiences using key terms in relation to the learning
outcomes.
Purpose and Grading
Both task 1 and task 2 are essential elements of a portfolio--
they work together to give the reader an overall picture of your
writing development and your own understanding of your
writing. Therefore, you will not be graded on each component
but, rather, on the portfolio as a whole. The primary questions
that will guide grading of the portfolio are:

4. · How well is the portfolio guided by a sense of purpose? Does
its contents and selection of supporting artifacts contribute to
its sense of purpose?
· Does your reflective essay engage with the student learning
outcomes and key terms in a substantive way?
· Does the writing in the portfolio provide sufficient and
effective evidence to support the claims you make in your
reflective essay?
· How well does the reflection demonstrate knowledge of genre
conventions, such as mechanics, usage, and expression?
Format Requirements
· Your portfolio should have an engaging title.
· Your portfolio should include a table of contents with clear
headings that link to specific artifacts.
· Your reflection should be 3-4 pages and be double-spaced in
MS Word and formatted in 12-pt. font with 1-inch margins.
· Your reflection should follow MLA format as described in
Rules for Writers.
· All required drafts must be typed and uploaded to D2L.
UA Writing Program SLOs
Goal 1: Rhetorical Awareness. Learn strategies for analyzing
texts’ audiences, purposes, and contexts as a means of
developing facility in reading and writing.
1. Student Learning Outcomes: At the end of the First-Year
Composition (FYC) sequence, students will be able to
a. identify the purposes of, intended audiences for, and
arguments in a text, as situated within particular cultural,
economic, and political contexts.
b. analyze the ways a text’s purposes, audiences, and contexts
influence rhetorical options.
c. analyze how genres shape reading and composing practices.
d. read in ways that contribute to their rhetorical knowledge as
writers.
e. respond to a variety of writing contexts calling for purposeful
shifts in structure, medium, design, level of formality, tone,

5. and/or voice.
Goal 2: Critical Thinking and Composing. Use reading and
writing for purposes of critical thinking, research, problem
solving, action, and participation in conversations within and
across different communities.
2. Student Learning Outcomes: At the end of the First-Year
Composition (FYC) sequence, students will be able to
a. employ a variety of research methods, including primary
and/or secondary research, for purposes of inquiry.
b. evaluate the quality, appropriateness, and credibility of
sources.
c. incorporate evidence, such as through summaries,
paraphrases, quotations, and visuals.
d. synthesize research findings in development of an argument.
e. support ideas or positions with compelling discussion of
evidence from multiple sources.
f. compose persuasive researched arguments for various
audiences and purposes, and in multiple modalities.
Goal 3: Reflection and Revision. Understand composing
processes as flexible and collaborative, drawing upon multiple
strategies and informed by reflection.
3. Student Learning Outcomes: At the end of the First-Year
Composition (FYC) sequence, students will be able to
a. adapt composing and revision processes for a variety of
technologies and modalities.
b. produce multiple revisions on global and local levels.
c. suggest useful global and local revisions to other writers.
d. identify the collaborative and social aspects of writing
processes.
e. evaluate and act on peer and instructor feedback to revise
their texts.
f. reflect on their progress as academic writers.
Goal 4: Conventions. Understand conventions as related to

6. purpose, audience, and genre, including such areas as
mechanics, usage, citation practices, as well as structure, style,
graphics, and design.
4. Student Learning Outcomes: At the end of the First-Year
Composition (FYC) sequence, students will be able to
a. follow appropriate conventions for grammar, punctuation, and
spelling, through practice in composing and revising.
b. reflect on why genre conventions for structure, paragraphing,
tone, and mechanics vary.
c. identify and effectively use variations in genre conventions,
including formats and/or design features.
d. demonstrate familiarity with the concepts of intellectual
property (such as fair use and copyright) that motivate
documentation conventions.
e. apply citation conventions systematically in their own work.