E365: Writing in Digital Environments

Assignment 4:  Digital Portfolio

The Assignment:  Your final portfolio will showcase your work across this course.  You may choose to revise and improve earlier pieces from your portfolio, compose new pieces, or a combination thereof.  You can use audio projects, video projects, or blogging projects.  Your portfolio should take one of two forms:

• 3-Piece Portfolio: The three pieces you have already composed this semester, 2 of which should be significantly revised.

• 4-Piece Portfolio: The three pieces you have already composed this semester, plus one more.  You can choose from 1)a set of 5 new blog posts with a critical introduction; 2)an audio narrative collection; 3)a 60 second video.

Post your digital portfolio on your blog in a way that is most suitable for your collection of materials.

The success of your Portfolio will be directly tied to how you think about, approach, and execute each of your projects. In addition to the three or four projects, you will describe, analyze, and assess the work in your Portfolio.

You should also consider the following:

• Your projects can be about subjects of your choice as long as your treatment of that subject matter is rigorous, serious, critical, and reflective.

• Your projects must exhibit your careful considerations of rhetorical choice surrounding the issues of audience, purpose, forum, and technological affordances.  Also, your projects must exhibit your careful consideration of genre and its conventions.  Finally, your projects must exhibit your careful consideration of design.

• You must be able to secure permission to use every element in your projects.  When necessary, you may be required to secure written permissions. All work must be carefully cited.

 

Approaches: Your approach to these three assignments and your portfolio will not be prescribed by me.  Instead, you will create projects that relate to your interests, that utilize technologies toward which you gravitate, and that pertain to work you hope to accomplish (or finish, or re-imagine).  As you think about developing a portfolio of work, you should consider how the discrete parts coalesce.  Do the projects compose a single story or argument?  Do you want to illustrate expertise by working on one genre or in one technological mode?  Or do the three projects represent a diversity of work in genre and/or production?

 

Task #1: Analytical Lens
For each project in your portfolio, you will create an Analytical Lens chart with the following categories:

Project title	This is the title that you give your project.
Project genre	This is a description of the kind of project that you have produce.
Project description/ rhetorical moves	This is a detailed description of your project that also includes your purpose, your audience, the forum or place of publication of your project.
Technologies	This is a list of technological modes and production tools you used to create your project.
Materials/references	This is a list of material/assets that you used in the production of your project and any necessary attributions.

Form: Written text, MLA format.

Due: Monday, Nov 26

 

Task #2: The Proposal
Using your analytic lens charts, produce a one-page, single-spaced alphabetic proposal that describes the two or three pieces you intend to include in your portfolio as well as the forum and format of your portfolio.  If you imagine that the pieces will exist independent of each other, you can write this proposal in three or four sections—one for each piece and one for the forum/format.  If you see a common thread running throughout the pieces, you should include a section for that, too. Your writing should be descriptive, detailed, and reflective.  You should include why you are interested in working on these pieces, and you should account for preparatory work necessary to be successful and the challenges you expect to face.

Form: Written text, MLA format, one-page, single-spaced

Due: Wednesday, Nov 28

 

Task #3: The Portfolio 
You will publish your portfolio on your blog and you need to choose an appropriate forum and format for showcasing your finished portfolio pieces.  Depending on the media you work with, you might create a single or small collection of web pages, separate blog entries, or a PowerPoint, and your projects might be published on a variety of media sites.

Form: Digital compositions published on your WordPress Blog

Due: Friday, Dec 14

 

Task #3: Outcomes
For each project in your portfolio, you will create a set of outcomes on which your work can be assessed (by you and by me).  These outcomes should be derived from and flesh out the Analytical Lens chart and should highlight the elements of your project that are most deserving of attention for qualitative assessment of your work.   Develop only 3 -4 outcomes for each project.  These should be written as statements.  I will provide sample outcomes in class.

Form: Written text, MLA format; emailed to the professor by 5pm.

Due: Friday, Dec 7

 

Task #4: Assessment
For each project in your portfolio, provide a qualitative assessment of your work that reflects the outcomes you created.  This section should be written in sentence/paragraph form and should follow a basic “claims and evidence” pattern:

 1.  Restate an outcome.

2.  Make a claim stating your success or challenge in meeting that outcome.

3.  Point to evidence in the piece that illustrates how you met the outcome.

 You might also wish to include overall impressions of the project and reflect on learning challenges and successes.

Form: Written text, MLA format

Due: Friday, Dec 14

 

 

Many thanks to Scott Lloyd DeWitt for allowing me to use his own short form portfolio assignment as a model.