Literary Kinds: Instructions for Preparing your Final Web Portfolio

Instructions for Preparing Your Final Portfolio Literary Kinds Bryn Mawr College Spring 2012 Anne Dalke

This process invites you to "diffract" on all the work you have done for this course, to chronicle what has happened in your evolution both as a writer and a speaker in class, and to contribute to and assist me with the evaluation of your work. You've already created three web events and made multiple weekly forum posts. Now you will also

* participate in our final "teach-in": join with several other students to share your reflections on your experiences over the semester, encouraging, in a provocative and entertaining way, further exploration on the part of others in the class.

* post a description of your contribution to the "teach-in." This can take one of various forms: it might be a script you used for your performance, a description of the activity you planned, or of what happened during your portion of this final session (anything that surprised you?). One of you can post the script; each of the others in the group should add a comment or explanation or further reflections.

* after meeting for a final writing conference with me, post your final (12-pp. or equivalent) web event on-line; you'll want to do this early enough to give yourself time for what follows.

Then! please log on to Serendip; in the bar across the top of the page you'll see "my portfolio." Clicking on that will call up your three web events and my comments on them, as well as all your forum postings and comments.

* Review all this material, and ruminate for a while on what you’re noticing as you revisit your whole semester's work.

* Then write a short (2-3 pp.) essay "diffracting" where you were when we began this process, where you are now, and what’s been happening in between. How have you been learning? What have you been learning? Where do you think that the edges of your learning now lie?

Be specific and descriptive, but also evaluative.

** Review the checklist.

** Review your participation in our group work: how present-and-contributing have you been in our discussions, both large and small? What role have you assumed in our group dynamics, both in-class and on-line? How much of your class work was focused on your own learning? In what ways have you been contributing to the learning of others?

** Re-consider your reading for the course: What were your joys-and-pleasures? What were your challenges? What were the ways that you grew as a reader? Where are your learning edges as a reader?

** Review also your written work: How much of your on-line writing was "stand-alone," how much written in response to others' reflections? What on-line response did you garner from your classmates? How much effort have you put into the web postings and each of your web events? What can you say about the quality of these productions? What have you learned about your writing and thinking processes in this class? Where have you "moved"?

* Click "Self-Evaluation" here (or select it from the pull-down menu of "Create Content" @ the top of our home page, or select  "Create Self-Evaluation" from under our course name, in the left-hand column). Complete the form with the material you've written above. Refresh your browser, then check to make sure that this self-evaluation has shown up @ the top of your portfolio (which you can access, again, from the list along the top of the page).

Note that this means that your evaluation, as part of your portfolio, will be publicly available on the web (although it is not tagged to show up in our ongoing on-line class conversation).

You should e-mail me any comments that you do not want to be public.

* Complete the checklist and submit it electronically (this is the only dimension of the portfolio that will be private = readable only by me).

In my response to this portfolio, I'll be giving you a grade not just for the quality of your written work, but also for class participation and process. Your self-evaluation will assist me with my own, as I reflect on your engagement in the course.

I very much look forward to seeing what you come up with, as well as what you have to say about it.

Thanks for joining in the exploratory journey we've taken together this semester.
I've enjoyed it very much, and learned a lot--

Anne