7/30/2019 Srr Portfolio

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/srr-portfolio 1/1

11/27/12

McElroy - WEPO

SRR on Portfolio

“They (portfolios) are, first, longitudinal in nature; second, diverse in content; and third, almost always

collaborative in ownership and composition.” 

A portfolio is meant to demonstrate how its creator has improved their work over time. Our E-portfolios

are to include metacognitive work: work that is introspective and comments on it’s on process, etc.

Yancey says the purpose is self-reflexiveness, to supplement the works with commentary for further

understanding of the writer, to enable the author to see their work through a “terministic screen”

(Burke’s terminology) etc, etc.

Teacher evaluation causes a product-based methodology, which doesn’t necessarily

demonstrate the author’s growth as a writer. The author is simply trying to get a high

grade. I think if the author has the teacher in mind as the audience, he or she will write

a totally different paper than if he or she had their peers or simply anybody in mind as

their audience. For example, they might want to show off by inserting vocabulary words

from their class’ textbook, making certain parts seem forced. Yancey says the portfolio

helps eliminate the first issue (and another of lesser importance in my opinion), by does

not address the issue I’ve raised. 

Making a portfolio is an opportunity to recontextualize previous works. It gives you a chance to go back

and say, “This is actually an example of X, even though the topic exemplifies Y and Z. From doing this

assignment, I learned A, B, and C.” 

Teachers and their guidelines play an important role in students creating portfolios.

Their constructive criticism is crucial to the outcome. Portfolios might be set within

narrow guidelines, in which case, they are specific to the material in the class and are

not as general. Addressing the teacher’s material is crucial in this situation, but this may

in turn hamper the practicality of the portfolio itself for use in other scenarios. For

example, in our portfolio assignment, I might want to use the website for my portfolio

on my resume to supplement a job application. And so, I should focus heavily on the

presentation and diversity of the webpage and less so on metacognitive commentary.

Employers probably don’t want to read too much of that. I suppose ideally one should

do the assignment to the teacher’s specifications, and then go back and edit it later for

practical use. That’s surely what I’ll do after I receive my grade for this project, Stephen.