Research in Writing & Writing Studies: Qualitative Research
Portfolios
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LEE TORDA 310 Tillinghast Hall Bridgewater State University 508.531.2436 ltorda@bridgew.edu www.leetorda.com Fall 2020 Open Hours for students (office hours): M 12:30-2:00 W 10:00-11:00, 3:00-4:00 Th 10:00-11:00 and by appointment. |
NOTE: All classes, student meetings, and open hours (office hours) this Fall 2020 will be held virtually.
Links to Open Hour for Students Zoom sessions: For Monday Open Hours, click here. For Wednesday Open Hours @ 10:00, click here. For Wednesday Open Hours @3:00, click here. For Thursday Open Hours, click here. Need to make an during a time that is not an office hour? appointment? Let me know you want to meet by adding yourself to my google.doc appointment calendar here: https://goo.gl/3CqLf and I will send you a zoom link for the time you sign up for. |
OVERVIEW
Portfolios work in different ways in different classes. Sometimes they are used to simply collect the work that a student has done over a period of time. Sometimes they are used to mark progress via revision. And sometimes they are used as a way to assess student work—not simply writing work but effort and progress in class.
The portfolios you will turn in will do a little bit of all three of those things. This is a chance for you to collect/reflect on your work, to think about what you’ve done well and what you still need to learn. I’ll ask you to write about this in a reflection letter that you include with the portfolios. Another way you will showcase your progress is through revision. You’ll write about this in your reflection letter as well.
Scholarship tells us that portfolio assessment is a truer assessment of student effort and progress for several reasons. First and most obvious: it requires students engage in further thinking about their writing through revision as well as reflection. Portfolios ask students to think about where the writing is, where it is working or not working, and what they can do as writers to move it to a new place. That meta-awareness of writing and process is a big threshold concept in a writer's experience. There are few ways to move students to that threshold except for through the portfolio. Connected to this, reflection is a major component of the portfolio, and, again, that work brings awareness of a writer's own particular process.
Finally, I will use the portfolios as a way of assessing your effort, progress as a writer and as a student, and the quality of your written work. I will assess the portfolios and include a lengthy letter to you when I return them. That letter will detail your entire career in this class up to that point. It will give you feedback on the quality of the portfolio itself, and I will give you a letter grade that marks your progress in a way that is valued by the college. The letter will include individual grades based on the contracts for the various assignments as well as an overall grade for the portfolio and this first half of the semester.
DETAILS
At midterm, you will send me an email. That email will include, either embedded in the email or as a link to a google doc, the following materials that make up your your portfolio:
1. About 200-350 words (typed) reflecting on the most significant reading you feel you've done so far this semester. Include the dates from the class discussion board posts/author names of the reading response(s) that you discuss in your reflection. You can write this directly into your midterm portfolio email.
2. Your Research Notebook and completed (revised) Telling the Stories of Others project. This is the bulk of your portfolio. See the assignment for a detailed list of all 7 things that make up your research notebook/final product.
3. A Midterm Reflection Letter. In 300-500 words, please reflect on the following:
What have you learned about qualitative research so far this semester?
Portfolios work in different ways in different classes. Sometimes they are used to simply collect the work that a student has done over a period of time. Sometimes they are used to mark progress via revision. And sometimes they are used as a way to assess student work—not simply writing work but effort and progress in class.
The portfolios you will turn in will do a little bit of all three of those things. This is a chance for you to collect/reflect on your work, to think about what you’ve done well and what you still need to learn. I’ll ask you to write about this in a reflection letter that you include with the portfolios. Another way you will showcase your progress is through revision. You’ll write about this in your reflection letter as well.
Scholarship tells us that portfolio assessment is a truer assessment of student effort and progress for several reasons. First and most obvious: it requires students engage in further thinking about their writing through revision as well as reflection. Portfolios ask students to think about where the writing is, where it is working or not working, and what they can do as writers to move it to a new place. That meta-awareness of writing and process is a big threshold concept in a writer's experience. There are few ways to move students to that threshold except for through the portfolio. Connected to this, reflection is a major component of the portfolio, and, again, that work brings awareness of a writer's own particular process.
Finally, I will use the portfolios as a way of assessing your effort, progress as a writer and as a student, and the quality of your written work. I will assess the portfolios and include a lengthy letter to you when I return them. That letter will detail your entire career in this class up to that point. It will give you feedback on the quality of the portfolio itself, and I will give you a letter grade that marks your progress in a way that is valued by the college. The letter will include individual grades based on the contracts for the various assignments as well as an overall grade for the portfolio and this first half of the semester.
DETAILS
At midterm, you will send me an email. That email will include, either embedded in the email or as a link to a google doc, the following materials that make up your your portfolio:
1. About 200-350 words (typed) reflecting on the most significant reading you feel you've done so far this semester. Include the dates from the class discussion board posts/author names of the reading response(s) that you discuss in your reflection. You can write this directly into your midterm portfolio email.
2. Your Research Notebook and completed (revised) Telling the Stories of Others project. This is the bulk of your portfolio. See the assignment for a detailed list of all 7 things that make up your research notebook/final product.
3. A Midterm Reflection Letter. In 300-500 words, please reflect on the following:
What have you learned about qualitative research so far this semester?
- What would you like to get better at as a qualitative researcher?
- Related to the first two questions, in what places do we see both what you've learned and what you've yet to learn in your Telling the Stories of Others piece?
- Finally, please consider how you would like the rest of the semester to run and respond honestly. A little bit about what I'm asking: This is a strange semester. Yes. And you all find yourselves in this class for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with me or with a great desire to explore qualitative research. Further, you are a quiet bunch. That's not a criticism. Quiet is fine. Quiet is lovely. But it's tough in an online class--at least for me. It's not my sense that folks are getting a lot out of meeting on Wednesdays. Personally, I have found our one-on-one meetings to be more useful--I think they are useful to you; I don't know that for sure, but I know they are useful to me because it's there that I really see what you are thinking and learning and struggling with, and then I can plan accordingly. Thus, would you prefer to meet one-on-one roughly every 2 weeks for a twenty minute discussion of whatever class project you are working on? This would replace our Wednesday whole class meeting. Every once in a while I would hope for us to meet as a group--to share ideas and/or workshop drafts. But otherwise I'm suggesting perhaps class would run better largely asynchronously with one-on-one meetings biweekly with me supplemented by an augmented discussion board experience. I'm happy to continue to meet on Wednesdays. It's, frankly, easier for me to plan one class. But if we continue to meet as a group, I would value a more energetic presence from each of you during that time. This is totally confidential, and it will majority rules. My goal for this semester, as it is for all semesters, is to make this experience as useful as it is possible for it to be. Things, at the moment, don't feel like they are working so great, and I'd like to fix that.