Eportfolio Passes Muster

Having now engineered my first adaptation of Composition One around an eportfolio design, I culled through my students’ final reflections essays to see what they had to say about the process. Granted their comments are not likely to be very negative for their fear of jeopardizing their grades; nevertheless, since I only suggested categories of things that they might comment on rather than specific points, I think their remarks are generally reliable because they, at least, choose what they wanted to reflect on. To help evaluate the class design, I selected nineteen students whose comments seemed relevant to a review of the eportfolio model. Here are some of my observations based on some of their responses.

In our composition committee’s general redesign of the course, we wanted to have the first-year composition sequence inquiry-based, which in this case meant spending the first half of the semester researching specific topics as thoroughly as time and student motivation would allow before the students claimed specific things in their research theses. Or, in other words, we wanted to avoid students beginning with a specific claim for which they would spend months cherry picking sources that only supported their claim. Instead, we wanted students to be as knowledgeable about the breadth and depth of their subjects as they reasonably could be before they publicly stated their positions. In this way, we hoped, those opinions had been conceived after a more immersive experience with facts and with others’ opinions.

In fact, several of the students in their investigations even conducted small surveys and sought information from on and off-campus experts. “Something…that I’ve come to enjoy from doing this ePortfolio was the process of actually conducting the investigation, as in, gathering all of the data I needed to make my case,” Student Eight commented. “I got to interact with a lot of strangers around campus from many different backgrounds and disciplines.” Student Eight and the others were encouraged to report on their research and their preliminary thoughts in a neutral tone with the understanding that they would be expected to have a very specific claim by the time they wrote their major paper centered on their investigation of a contemporary cultural trend.

Naturally, I also encouraged them to investigate trends that interested them, particularly if they were relevant to their proposed studies here at the university. Consequently, Student Six wrote that “when I embarked on this adventure I figured there would not actually be much for me to learn. I was very wrong for assuming this because I learned all kinds of things about this subject that I had never even thought about.” Similarly, Student Fifteen stated that “[b]eing made to research a topic for a whole semester that I thought I knew a lot about opened my eyes up to many different aspects of the topic that I did not know.” In many respects this aspect of the course design, as well as others, was about the students’ self-discovery as much as anything else. “Being able to write on a topic that I care about and is relevant to me made the writing and research I did so much easier,” wrote Student Twelve. “Most importantly, I learned that I could change my mind about something that I thought I was sure about.” This point seemed especially relevant to me as the teacher, that students would allow time, thought, facts, and logic to inform them, or as Student Twelve continued to elaborate, “My hope is that when people read my paper they learn from the process just as I did, and that they have more of an open mind when confronted with a controversial issue.”

As to the eportfolio process itself, that is, the single project of multiple parts and the reflective elements this included, though some students felt it was a bit repetitive for them, others appreciated the nuanced assignments and the scaffolded workload. “[T]his is the first time I have written separate papers about the same topic that compiled to form one piece,” Student One remarked. “I think this way of comprising a project was helpful, because it caused me to delve deeper into the topic and why it was important to me.” Student Five wrote “I’ve never had an assignment even remotely similar to this one, and I now prefer this type of project when it comes to writing. The way it was set up helped me pace my writing, which I have struggled with mightily at times.”

This was also the last of the core classes that I routinely teach that I adapted to our active learning classroom. I was certainly curious to see how the two pedagogical approaches of active learning and eportfolio would come together for me and my students, and, as I suspected, the two worked well together. Specifically, Student Four wrote “I found that the way the classroom was set up to be more interactive with my peers really helped me brainstorm and get new ideas. Being in a small group during class this semester has given me the chance to explore other people’s opinions easily and to receive their help on certain struggles I have faced on my papers.” In a traditional classroom environment, this type of peer interaction was less reliable because it was not as frequent, but in a deliberately designed active learning environment, this peer work is constant from week one, and so, by the time the standbys of peer review and similar work arrive, a familiarity and trust has already been established which makes the peer review less awkward and more productive.

As Student Seven describes this effect: “my classmates have helped me form and show my ideas in a more logical manner that does not seem redundant by moving sentences around to help the paper flow well. I have found the importance in peer editing and revision to help avoid grammatical and structural errors.” But peer cooperation wasn’t just revision and editing; it was also brainstorming and feedback. “This was also the first time,” Student Seven continues, “that I was in a writing class where classmates could and were encouraged to review each other’s writing. Reading other classmates’ writing gave me ideas for what to write for my own papers, and classmates gave me constructive criticism for my own writing.” Student Ten was a bit more particular about how this might work: “Being able to interact with my peers has greatly improved my ability to develop ideas for my work. Before we begin writing, we interview each other on our topics and how we plan to use these points to meet the requirements of the assignment. This has helped me through my thought process of constructing ideas for my paper and ePortfolio.” Student Twelve’s opinion on this point was not unexpected: “Due to having an interactive classroom, I got second opinions on my drafts because the people were there at my table to read over my papers. They also asked me questions, which I found extremely helpful because it made me think deeper and realize what needed further explanation in my paper.” Again, this is how standard peer review is supposed to work, but the active learning component produced more of these consistently positive results for me than the same practice in a traditional classroom.

At the most basic level, what the eportfolio design did for the students, and did particularly well in the active learning environment, was to create a purpose for their work, which could, if they wished and chose wisely, be a purpose that relates to their own identities and their own futures. “Turning in my analysis essay was the proudest moment in my writing career,” wrote Student Thirteen. “It was the climax of my first major writing project, taught me the process of research and analysis, but most of all it changed my entire view on myself as a writer.”