Final Portfolio

Posted Thu, 04/09/2009 - 09:25 by Daniel Anderson

Here are the instructions for completing all of the work in the class and submitting it in your final portfolio. Let me start by stressing that the portfolio is the document I will use to review all of your work in the class. It should represent as much as possible the effort, learning, growth, and engagement you have had with the course materials and questions.

Logistically, follow these steps:

  • Go to the Create Content link and select Portfolio. Open the posting that you made for your midterm portfolio and copy the materials, then paste them into the Portfolio posting. You will now be ready to revise/develop the final portfolio.
  • Make links to all of the drafts and revisions for all of your projects. (Your video might not have a revision.)
  • Make links to any blog postings or comments you have made.
  • Compose reflections for each of the projects.
  • Compose a cover letter reflecting on your work and the course as a whole.
  • Polish the composition, making sure everything works and that it reads well.

Those are just the mechanical steps. Conceptually, think of the portfolio as a composition in its own right. Consider working with the layout (using images, fonts, colors, flow, etc.) as you did with the playlist. Also make sure that you are fully addressing two things: 1.) the projects themselves--zoom in, explaining the compositions, detailing revisions, connecting to questions of learning, media, genres, reading, writing, your own perspectives, etc.; and 2.) the big questions (What exactly is English studies? How does what we have studied and made relate to the discipline? What should we learn? What does the future hold?)

Ideally the cover letter and the project reflections will both touch on and tie together the conceptual concerns you will take up. You don't have to address all of these or even the ideas I am laying out; you do need to reflect intently on your work in the class and connect it to a larger concern.

You will need to have the portfolio completed by the time of the final exam for the course.