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Welcome to the Writing and Communication Program at Georgia Tech site for electronic portfolio assessment. This website is your guidebook to the portfolio and contains all you need to know for your monthly ePortfolio assessment meetings.
The site also features feeds of help documentation designed for both faculty and students. Here you will find three types of features that you can use to better understand the portfolio and monthly portfolio assessment process:
Use these features as a guide to creating portfolios in Canvas, embedding different file types, and final portfolio submission.
If you have questions or suggestions regarding the contents of the site for about portfolio assessment in general, please do not hesitate to contact mckenna.rose@lmc.gatech.edu.
About ePortfolios & WCP Assessment
Every student in every section of ENGL 1101/2 taught at Georgia Tech composes an electronic portfolio and submits the portfolio at the end of the semester. Each portfolio includes a Reflective Essay on the first page, a page showcasing the Common First Week Video and process materials through which students developed the video, as well as a series of short, reflective paragraphs through which students narrate their progress through the course. In addition to the Reflective Essay, Common First Week Video page, and connective reflective writing, students are required to include at least three other pages that showcase final drafts of major artifacts produced in the course along with process materials, that is drafts, pitches, artist statements, scripts, drawings, and peer feedback reports. Because composing in multiple modes is a central aim of the WCP, student portfolios are likely to include final and process documents for podcasts, videos, posters, presentations, board games, artbooks, maps, and much more.
The goal of the ePortfolio project is two fold. The first goal of the project is to integrate the reflection on writing as a process into every stage of ENGL 1101/2 at Georgia Tech, and the ePortfolio is the best measure of how well students meet the WCP outcome on process and reflection. When students reflect on not only what they learned, but also how they learned it, studies show they are more likely to transfer those skills from first year courses to their major subject classes. In other words, the portfolio demonstrates to students and faculty, the ways in which writing is a process that occurs in always changing constraints. Through the composition of the showcase portfolio, we aim for students to meet future writing challenges by drawing on a writing process best suited to the contexts they face.
The second goal of the ePortfolio project is programmatic Assessment. Brittain Fellows and WCP Lecturers meet in assigned groups of three six times over the academic year to assess how well a randomly generated set of student portfolios shows how well the WCP has met its programmatic outcomes. The portfolios are scored in terms of the WCP Common Feedback Chart, which is embedded below.
WCP Common Feedback Chart
Assessment Form & How-To Access URLs
Monthly Assessment Form
Monthly Assessment Dropbox Folder
How-To Access Portfolio URLs
Common Feedback Chart
Best Practices & FAQs
Please find the Best Practice and FAQ document below. If you would like to contribute to the FAQs, please email mckenna.rose@lmc.gatech.edu.
How long should I meet with my assessment group?
Each group should meet for 3 hours, allowing one hour per individual portfolio. Spend 10-15 minutes assessing and discussing each page of the portfolio. Each portfolio should have five pages, including a reflective essay, a first-week common video, and three additional artifacts. (Summer portfolios do not include first-week videos). The discussion that leads to scoring consensus with your group is the most important part of the assessment.
What exactly are we assessing?
As you assess, consider:
- The quality of the artifact itself
- How well the student describes the context for the artifact
- How well the student uses process documents as evidence of their writing process
- How well the student uses the reflection section to discuss the assignment Goals, Purpose, Audience, Design for Medium, and Revision
- How well the page is organized given the affordances of Canvas
Please do not assess:
- The software used to compose the ePortfolio
- The instructor’s assignment
When evaluating modes, are we looking at all the process documents or the final artifact?
The only modes you should consider are in the modes of the artifact itself.
Can I just list the number of process documents used?
No. Please list the type of each process document the student uses.
Are we assessing how the student uses Canvas?
The layout of the artifact page in Canvas should not influence your assessment of the student’s project. Likewise, the project having been submitted using Canvas is not sufficient grounds for an artifact to qualify as being electronic.
How do I judge if a mode is present in a project?
Written |
Oral |
Visual |
Electronic |
Non-Verbal |
Most Artifacts | Podcasts | Posters | Websites | Podcasts |
Sound Collections | Artbooks | Slideshows | Poster Session | |
Vide0 | Brochures | Video | Presentation | |
Recorded Presentations | Board Games | Podcasts | Board Games | |
Slideshows | Posters/Brochures | Survey | ||
Video | Protest | |||
Websites | ||||
3D Objects |
This list above is not exhaustive. Many artifacts have multiple modes. Anything using digital design software, counts as both visual and electronic. Non-Verbal includes gesture, intonation, and volume of the voice.
Why is consensus preferable in the post-discussion ratings of portfolio artifacts?
A post-discussion consensus helps to prepare assessment data for university-facing reports. By discussing your judgments, everyone in the WCP develops a better understanding of the assignment and its rankings.
What should you do if you disagree with your group?
Try to resolve the disagreement. If after five minutes you do not agree, bubble in your score and use the notes field to indicate why you’re committed to a different position. The Assistant Director for Assessment uses this information to prepare the data for reports. Please also note, you do not need to agree exactly, but instead come within one category, higher or lower, as your group.
What should I do if a portfolio is missing an artifact?
In the Google form, select “N/A” across the board in both the pre and post discussion fields because the form requires an answer for each artifact. Please add a note explaining that the student was missing the artifact. This applies if a student is missing an artifact page altogether or if they do not include the final artifact in the page itself.
How do I assess an artifact that is unfamiliar to me (e.g., podcasts, board games, etc.)?
Review the instructor’s assignment sheet in order to understand the goals and purpose of the assignment. Consider how the common rubric applies to the assignment. The Google Monthly Team Assignment sheet provides links for each assignment.
How do I assess an artifact that consists of multiple parts?
Refer to the instructor’s assignment sheet so that you can understand the purpose of the various pieces of the artifact. If a student has included a scaffolding piece of a larger assignment (annotated bibliography, project proposal) that qualifies as a process document. In some cases, a final artifact might consist of two or more parts.
When we are evaluating modes, are we looking at all the process documents or the final artifact?
The final artifact should be used to determine the modes.
I’m doing assessment on a monthly basis. Should I list membership in the Assessment Committee on my CV?
No. While monthly assessment is an important and critical task, the Assessment Committee serves an administrative function that is distinct.
If you have a question or concern that you think the Assessment Committee should add to this document, please contact:
Dr. McKenna Rose
mckenna.rose@lmc.gatech.edu
Assistant Director for Assessment
Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow
Assessment Committee Members, 2018-Present
Hannah Markley, Executive Member
George Thomas, Member
Aleksander Sedzielarz, Member
Mary Grace Elliott, Member
John Taylor, Member
McKenna Rose, Chair
Assessment Committee Members and Chairs, 2016-2017 and 2017-2018
Michael Griffin, Member
James Howard, Member
Ian Afflerbach, Member
Dori Coblentz, Member
Russell Kirkscey, Member
Andrea Krafft (2015-16 Co-Chair, 2016-2017 Chair)
Rebekah Greene (2017-2019 Chair)
Portfolio Upload Instructions
Please find instructions for submitting Student Portfolios to Dropbox. Please note: we are no longer using the LMC Shares Drive and you do no longer need to login through the remote VPN to submit portfolios.
Preparing Portfolio Files for Submission
Once all of your students have submitted a URL for their portfolios using the Assignments function in Canvas, complete the following to prepare the portfolio files for submission to the dropbox folder:
Responding to Student Work
Grading Multimodal Projects
Building Rubrics in Canvas