ENGL 1102 Portfolio Instructions Navigation
Part 1: Overview | Part 2: Composing Your Portfolio | Part 3: Portfolio Creation Tips
Part 4: Sample Portfolios | Part 5: Using Canvas to Create Your Portfolio
Contents
Assignment Summary
For the culminating assignment in English 1101 and 1102, you will finalize and submit a multimodal reflective portfolio in lieu of a final exam. For your multimodal reflective portfolio, you select evidence from your body of work produced in the course, provide a context for this evidence, and describe the ways in which the evidence supports your argument that you have grown as a communicator.
This instructional guide for the required multimodal reflective portfolio provides information about your portfolio’s rhetorical situation (including audience, purpose, and context) and the contents of the portfolio.
Rhetorical Situation of the ENGL 1101/1102 Portfolio
Purpose
The purpose of the multimodal reflective e-portfolio is to demonstrate and reflect about how well you have met the outcomes established for English 1101 and 1102 at Georgia Tech. English 1101 and 1102 both emphasize the composition of research-based multimodal arguments through a rigorous, rhetorically sensitive, and reflective process designed to teach the habits of effective communication. Each section of 1101 and 1102 may also have additional, theme-specific course outcomes included in your course syllabus.
Audience
While your instructor is the primary audience for your portfolio, your instructor is not the only audience. Secondary audiences for the portfolio include other instructors from the Writing and Communication Program at Georgia Tech, who read and evaluate your Canvas e-portfolio for programmatic assessment purposes. For this reason, you should assume your audience did not participate in your specific English class but is familiar with Georgia Tech’s Writing and Communication Program.
Note: Programmatic assessment occurs after the semester is over and does not affect your grade, GPA, or record—only your course instructor determines your course grade.
Reflection
When you explain why you made a change in revising a draft, you are more likely to remember that reason the next time you are faced with a similar composing task. Thus, a reflective portfolio serves multiple purposes for your learning. Most important, it requires you to reflect about your learning over the course of the semester, a concept called metacognition. Many research studies indicate that this reflection work improves your ability to transfer your strategic knowledge about effective communication practices to other situations—such as other classes and jobs. Careful reflection on your work gives you a chance to continue building your skills. Being able to document your choices and reflecting on why you made them is important practice for workplace self-assessments often necessary for review/promotion processes.
In a portfolio, the quality of evidence (what you did) is as important as the reflection (why you did it). Reflection always begins with evidence, but it never ends there. You should identify not only what you did, but why you did it in relationship to the outcomes of the course. For example, if you want to discuss the ways you revised the organization of a paper or poster, you need to explain why you changed the organization. Why is the new organization more effective? How does it respond to the audience or reflect the purpose of your artifact? By answering these questions, you not only demonstrate your engagement in the writing process, but you also demonstrate that you have developed a clearer understanding about the ways in which the sequence of your points might persuade your audience.
Contents Of The Portfolio
In order to demonstrate that you have met the goals of the course, you will compile a portfolio of your best work using the online Canvas e-portfolio application. The purpose of your portfolio is to demonstrate the ways your habits of effective communication have developed and expanded over the course of the semester.
Your portfolio is a collection of individual pages you create (one for the reflective essay and one for each artifact). Your audiences will be interested in both the quality of the selected artifacts and the quality of your reflections as they consider your portfolio. They are also interested in the process documents (blogs, memos, drafts, feedback, brainstorms, etc.) that you provide in support of your artifacts and reflections. You should make design choices (emphasis, contrast, organization, alignment, and proximity—see WOVENText) to respond to audience needs and demonstrate your proficiency in WOVEN communication.
Your portfolio must include the following pages in your portfolio:
- Reflective Introduction to the Portfolio: A page for a 1,200-1,800 word essay that introduces your portfolio and strategically employs multimodal elements such as images, videos, audio files, and/or links to accompany your text and demonstrate to your audience how your communication habits have evolved.
- Artifact 0: A page for your multimodal diagnostic video, which you produced during the first week of class, along with a reflection answering the directed reflection questions about the artifact.
- Artifacts 1-3: A page for each of three additional artifacts that together best reflect your work and development in the course, along with an introductory paragraph and short reflections (150-200 words) answering the directed reflection questions for each artifact. These artifacts must be chosen to highlight your development in all WOVEN modes.
Hint: Strong artifact pages will typically have four components—the artifact, a brief introduction to the artifact, the short reflection, and process documents. Adding process documents in support of all of your artifacts and reflections can help strengthen your overall argument about your development as a communicator.
ENGL 1102 Portfolio Instructions Navigation
Part 1: Overview | Part 2: Composing Your Portfolio | Part 3: Portfolio Creation Tips
Part 4: Sample Portfolios | Part 5: Using Canvas to Create Your Portfolio