1) Yancey offers a lot of compelling arguments for portfolio grading. What are the pros and cons? Especially for people who are planning on not using it, what are you planning to do instead? Why?
2) Wysocki offers several in-depth analyses of visual spaces in her article, which engage with everything from typeface to color to layout. How is critically analyzing visual elements similar and different to analyzing alphabetic text? Is it more or less culturally situated? Is it more or less individual?
The top pro is naturally the easy emphasis on revision and recursion, as it's sort of already built in by nature. A clear con is the fact that students might respond to getting no grades as a reason to sort of slack off on everything until they get to the portfolio, where they realize they made a big mistake and need to essentially do all the coursework to get that portfolio grade. Personally I'm thinking of making a portfolio a component of a grading system with all parts weighted equally, rather than a big chunk of the entire grade.
ReplyDeleteI'm solidly in the "I don't know yet" as to whether or not I will use a portfolio in my composition classes and if I do if it will be the basis for the entire essay portion of the grade or just an element of it. Like John I really like the emphasis on revision but I don't know how much time students have to meaningfully revise their essays after going through multiple drafts and then moving on to another essay all semester long. I don't want the portfolio to be as stressful for students as it currently feels for me. LOL
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