Content
This is the week to begin crafting your portfolio. You have curated your writing, performed some analyses of the writing ecosystems, reflected on your process and learning, justified your writing choices, visually represented your writing in an infographic, and revised a piece for a different audience and purpose. In addition, your previous coursework has led to you demonstrating the outcomes of the minor, so now it is time to feature all of this in a showcase portfolio.
There are two main types of portfolios. The first is a learning portfolio. Learning or assessment portfolios are designed to document the process of learning. They feature not only final drafts, but rough drafts of works and more extensive reflective work. They are less about mastery and more about documenting that learning took place.
The second type of portfolio is a showcase or display portfolio. These are designed to show achievement or mastery more than the process of learning. There are some reflective elements possible, but the intent is to feature exemplary work.
While there are some reflective elements, the final portfolio for this class and the minor is meant to be a display or showcase portfolio—it has a public audience, which is why you are designing in a website, and it is meant to show competency in writing by featuring written artifacts in a variety of different genres and for different audiences.
The portfolio can grow with you if you think of it as a matryoshka doll. This portfolio is just one of the many dolls, each contained in the next. For now, it is the primary portfolio. When you graduate, you can create a professional portfolio that features your résumé, sample work from your major, or internship projects—and a link to this other writing portfolio, contained in the professional portfolio.
The Writing Program values the work that you have done, and we hope you are proud of the final portfolio that best represents the Minor in Writing Practices.
This week, you will be working on the design and structure of your portfolio, writing some parts for it, and finding ways to feature or showcase the various components. It will be rewarding, time consuming, frustrating, and seemingly simple, all at once. I want to encourage you to tinker and revise, revisit the Design Analyses that you and your peers did that second week. Email if you have questions or want me to look at any options you are considering.
Design this week
- Portfolio [begin designing]
- Coursework Descriptions [due Friday]
- About/Bio [due Friday]
- Headpieces [due Friday]
- Other support or framework materials [as needed]
REMEMBER
- Your Revision is due next week on Wednesday. There will be a peer review with these “final” versions of your Revisions.
- Part of the Revision assignment is a Rhetorical Genre Analysis (see step #4) which should be posted to the blog no later than when you turn in your Revision next Wednesday.