Portfolio Assignment

Instructions: Portfolio Assignment  At the end of the semester you are required to submit a portfolio of your written work. This portfolio will contain four items. Three of these items will be essays from assignments that you submitted before the midterm examination and revised during the second half of the course, based on feedback you received from your mentor. The fourth item is an essay that will document your awareness of the decisions you made and processes you employed as you revised the other three items in your portfolio. This assignment will account for 20 percent of your final grade.  The object of this exercise is for you to improve your writing skills by being consciously aware of the decisions you make and the processes you use when developing written work. That is why you are asked to take notes as you revise your assignments (see #2 and #3 below).  In technical terms you will be recording your metacognitive process. Metacognition is usually defined as “knowing about knowing”: analyzing your own learning or thinking process. The metacognitive process is actually two separate processes that take place at the same time. First, you will be checking your progress as you learn; second, you will be making any adjustments necessary to improve your performance if you think you need to do better. The essay you are to produce as part of this assignment should be based on your notes and should be a polished explanation of the process, describing what you did to improve your earlier assignments and why.  Guidelines: Portfolio Assignment  Completing the final project involves four steps:  The first step is to choose three of the six essays you handed in before the midterm examination; these three should be ones that you want to revise and resubmit as part of this portfolio.  The second step to analyze your three essays to see where you could improve them while keeping notes on the process. You will use these notes to produce a final essay of approximately 750 words discussing the decisions and choices involved in your revisions.  The third step is to revise the three essays you chose while continuing to keep notes detailing your writing and revision processes.