The American West

Due online at 5:35 p.m. sharp on Wednesday, Nov. 28

The purpose of this assignment is to provide you with a chance to reflect upon what you have learned, to critically analyze your work, and to practice the selection of and presentation of your work to an audience.

You will submit your portfolio electronically, using the Catalyst CollectIt tool.  I use electronic portfolios for several reasons:

• They eliminate the use of paper, because I can read and comment on your portfolio's comments online;
• You do not have to worry about printer problems, which are much more common than other computer problems;
  
• You and I can work on portfolios from anywhere in the world where we have Internet access, without having to haul papers around;
• Your portfolio will remain archived, so you will have access to it when you need to complete your graduation portfolio in your senior capstone course;
• You can submit your portfolio without being on campus on the due date;
• Neither you nor I can lose your documents.

Instructions 

• First, write a formal, reflective paper of about 800 words (no fewer than 600 and no more than 1000) that discusses, in an order that makes sense as the best way to present your thinking:
  • your reflections upon what you feel you have learned in this course, with a focus on your performance rather than on the course itself
  • how you think you learned what you learned
  • how you feel about the various aspects of your work, including, but not limited to, the degree to which you have made progress in the following areas:
    • critical reading
    • formal writing
    • small-group and full-class discussions
    • understanding of aspects of the American West
  • what you feel you will carry into your future courses (if any) and into your lifelong learning
  • what your priorities are for continuing improvement and learning

As a formal piece of university writing, your reflective essay should be typed and double-spaced throughout, using a standard font (like Times New Roman) in 12-point size, and with margins of one inch all the way around each page. By "formal," I mean that I expect carefully considered and carefully written work, which should be formally formatted, including double spacing. This probably requires some writing and revision before you can produce a high-quality, final product to include in the portfolio. First-person ("I") statements are fine. Please re-read "Tips for Better Prose" at <http://faculty.washington.edu/davidgs/Prose.html> after getting your main ideas down on paper but before submitting your final version of your reflective essay. Provide a meaningful but brief title for your paper (not "Reflective Essay" but rather a short hint of your paper's main point or thrust) and a standard academic heading (as described in T20 in "Tips for Better Prose").

Just before you submit your reflective paper online, do a final word count (in the Tools pull-down menu of Microsoft Word) to make sure you meet the 600- to 1000-word parameters. You do not need to type the number of words; I will be able to do my own word count of your paper.

Name your Microsoft Word file " Lastname490Reflective," using your last name in place of Lastname and omitting the quotation marks and using no spaces, like this:

Mahone490Reflective

Please be sure to capitalize exactly as shown in the example.

• Then, one by one, you will add content to your electronic portfolio. Refer to the specific instructions below for each item.

Contribution Self-Assessment.  In a Microsoft Word document with a standard academic heading (see T20 in "Tips for Better Prose" ), write two substantial paragraphs that explain:

(a) which of the participant profiles described in the course's contribution document at <http://faculty.washington.edu/davidgs/Partic.html> best fits you so far, and why you think so, matching specific elements of the descriptions to your own observations about your contributions for the whole quarter; and

(b) which of the small group roles, described in that same document, you have tried this quarter.  Please note that I expect this short response to be carefully written and proofread.

It is fine if your self-assessment is essentially the same as the midquarter version.  Just make sure it is up-to-date.

Name your Microsoft Word file " Lastname490SelfAssess," using your last name in place of Lastname and omitting the quotation marks and using no spaces, like this:

Mahone490SelfAssess

Please be sure to capitalize exactly as shown in the example.

To submit your contribution self-assessment, click on "Contribution Self-Assessment" phrase from the main portfolio menu.  Click on the "Browse" button and locate the file on your computer and select it.  Then return to the main portfolio menu.

Research Project.   (See http://faculty.washington.edu/davidgs/BIS490CResearch.html for instructions on writing this paper.)  Name your Microsoft Word file " Lastname490Research," using your last name in place of Lastname and omitting the quotation marks and using no spaces, like this:

Mahone490Research

Please be sure to capitalize exactly as shown in the example.

To submit this artifact, click on the "Research Project" phrase from the main portfolio menu. Then use the "Browse" button and locate the file on your computer and select it.  Then return to the main portfolio menu.

Reflective Paper. Your reflective paper is the final component of your learning portfolio. Name your Microsoft Word file " Lastname490Reflective," using your last name in place of Lastname and omitting the quotation marks and using no spaces, like this:

Mahone490Reflective

Please be sure to capitalize exactly as shown in the example.

To submit this artifact, click on the "Reflective Paper" phrase from the main portfolio menu. Then use the "Browse" button and locate the file on your computer and select it. Then return to the main portfolio menu.

Those three items complete your portfolio.

It does not matter when you submit items into your portfolio.  You can submit them one at a time, or all at once.  Please make sure you do not submit the portfolio until it is ready, and when you do submit it, please make sure that it contains everything that is supposed to be included.  If you submit one page later than other pages, the entire portfolio will bear the date and time of the last thing you submitted.

Your final learning portfolio is due online at 5:35 p.m. sharp on Wednesday, Nov. 28 . Because I have provided the maximum amount of time to complete this assignment, because I need to return graded portfolios before grades are due, and because I need to ensure an equal amount of time to be fair to everyone in class, I will accept late portfolios submitted after 5:35 p.m. on Nov. 28 but no later than 5:35 p.m. sharp on Nov. 29, with twenty percentage points deducted from the learning portfolio score and from the score on the research project.  However, I will be an absolute stickler for that grace period.  Let me be clear:  A portfolio submitted at 5:36 p.m. on Nov. 29 is not one minute late, but rather is twenty-four hours and one minute late, and I will not accept it.  I will accept no portfolios after 5:35 p.m. sharp on Nov. 28 for any reason, which probably will result in a 0.0 for the course, so I strongly recommend finishing early to avoid any unforeseen problems.  Try not to count on the twenty-four hour grace period.  Think of the deadline as 5:35 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 28.

Check the submission for yourself (required):

After submitting your portfolio, from the main page, check to see if an artifact appears on each page.  Then open each artifact to make sure it is the document you expected.

Basis for grading your learning portfolio:

Completeness (responds appropriately to the assignment in form and content)	20 percent
Depth of response (quality of detail and support; sophistication of ideas and argument)	70 percent
Quality of writing (organization; spelling, grammar, diction, punctuation)	10 percent
TOTAL	10 percent of final course grade

• Note that the score on the learning portfolio is entirely independent of your score on the individual artifacts. The research project will be graded separately and the grade and comments will be returned to you as part of the returned learning portfolio.
• If you activated e-mail notification as instructed above, you will receive an e-mail message when your portfolio is ready for you to pick up, although students sometimes do not receive this message.  (I think the message sometimes goes to a junk mail folder.)
• I will read, grade, and return portfolios in the order in which I receive them, so the earlier you submit your portfolio, the earlier you will get your grades.  My goal is to return each portfolio within ten days of its submission.  Please do not e-mail me to ask when your portfolio will be returned.  That really slows me down as I am trying to read hundreds of pages of documents in the portfolios.  Just count on picking it up (at the same link, above, that you used to submit the portfolio) ten calendar days after submitting it.  (Portfolios submitted during the grace period might take longer than ten calendar days.)
  
• Let me emphasize that I expect your best effort in this and every exercise. My expectations are high because your ability to produce outstanding work is high.

• Some additional advice:

• Save your work often (maybe every ten minutes) so you do not lose everything when your computer freezes.
• Visit the Writing Center (see <http://www.uwb.edu/writingcenter/>).
• I do not have time to read rough drafts, but I am very glad to discuss your portfolio or its components as you work on them. You would be wise to visit me during office hours (see syllabus) to make sure you are on the right track, and to get advice about any particular difficulties you might be encountering.
• Re-read this assignment sheet just before assembling the final portfolio to make sure it meets all of the requirements.

This page last updated Nov. 11, 2007.

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