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Portfolios
A portfolio is more a way for students to present their work than a system of grading it, but its use in the writing class has important implications for evaluation. At its simplest, a portfolio is a collection of student work; there are “process” portfolios (in which finished pieces of writing are accompanied by the drafts, peer reviews, cover sheets, etc., that went into their production) and “exemplary” or “best-work” portfolios that include only polished pieces. Some teachers use both kinds: they ask students at the end of each unit to hand in all (or most) of the writing they did for that unit, including generative writing and rough drafts; then, at the end of the semester, they ask students to reflect on and share with their classmates (and teacher) all their final papers as a group. Sometimes, by “portfolios,” teachers mean an evaluation system in which no grades or scores are ever (or rarely) put on individual “final” papers, reserving that kind of mark for the end-of-semester when the student submits a collection of his or her work for a final grade (alternately, some programs combine the final portfolio grade with a provisional mid-term grade to give students a sense of their progress so far).
One might see three key principles at work in portfolio grading. First, students should have all semester to revise their writing and explicit encouragement from us to re-see and re-work their papers without worrying about grades for as long as possible; after all, revision should be a central lesson of any writing class, and our hope should be that across the semester students are genuinely and continually stretching and strengthening their muscles as writers, readers, thinkers, and class participants. Second, students’ papers in a writing course can only be validly evaluated in the context of a whole semester’s worth of informal and formal writing, in response to a variety of assignments, for a diversity of purposes, with the assistance of many different readers, and in a multitude of genres. Third, students should have the chance, perhaps for the first time in their lives, to really own a body of their own writing: a collection of texts that, at the end of the semester, they have consciously re-read, reflected on, and intentionally selected for final presentation to a wider “public.” This last principle is the most important one for Nedra Reynolds and Rich Rice, who, in their book Portfolio Teaching: A Guide for Instructors, 2nd ed. (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006), talk about the importance of choice, variety, and reflection in the portfolios that students assemble.
Often, writing teachers will grade the final (and only the final) paper in each unit soon after that paper is turned in – in the belief that students benefit from some evaluation on their work at regular intervals in the course and in an effort not to leave all the grading in the course to the end. But the fact remains that a thorough-going process orientation means that we should defer grading students’ work for as long as possible, students should have more responsibility for evaluating and reflecting on their work themselves, and there should be more chances in their academic lives for them to pridefully, but thoughtfully, assert ownership over their intellectual and creative work.
To return to the list of systems for evaluating student writing, click here.
To return to the article on Evaluating Student Writing, click here.
Updated September 3, 2008
