Composition & Rhetoric Portfolios
The Composition Program takes a new approach to grading and student evaluation via the student portfolio. Students are often used to getting grades on individual papers. But the portfolio system emphasizes teacher comments and the content of what a student has written as the basis for evaluation. This approach emphasizes reflection and revision and is thus more deeply evaluative than grades. Writing portfolios are an integral part of our program's evaluation process and aid in gauging student progress both at the midterm and final evaluation stages.
Portfolios are visible records of what students have read, written and thought about in a composition course. Most students welcome the portfolio as an opportunity to rethink their semester's work as a whole rather than in a series of what may seem to them as unrelated assignments. Portfolios are also a way for teachers to assess what students have accomplished in the writing course. The portfolio allows teachers to determine how far each student has progressed as well as what kinds of connections they are able to make among the various assignments completed.
Portfolios, then, cannot be inserted into traditional curriculum and still achieve non-traditional outcomes. Reflective portfolios grow out of a culture that encourages flexible habits of mind and innovative assessment.
Student portfolios may include a number of assignments: journal entries, in-class free writing, rough drafts, peer critiques, conference notes, outlines, polished final papers, as well as assignments from other classes in college or high school. But, in order for portfolios to be effective, students must have some kind of choice about what to put in and leave out. There can always be a core of material that everyone submits (20 pages of polished writing) but the options make the portfolios interesting to assemble and exciting to read. Here are some possible portfolio artifacts that students might include:
- rough drafts of final papers
- journal or daybook entries
- peer group feedback
- brainstorming, mapping outlines/notes
- papers from other classes with assignment
- writing done outside of school, perhaps on the job
- other literary artifacts such as dance programs, computer programs,
- musical lyrics and writing for the self, letters, poetry or song lyrics.
