Your learning and plan

Due Monday, May 1, 2017, at 11:59PM.

The purpose of this assignment is to establish that you have met the big-picture learning goals outlined in the course syllabus:

To understand the theory and practice of this kind of assessment, I recommend a short position paper by John Zubizarreta on a technique called the “learning portolio”. (This is a little different from the writer’s portfolio that you will have accumulated in class, but they have points in common.)

You can hand any part of this assessment in early and ask me to evaluate it.

What to submit

Prepare and submit a final self-assessment. The document should be in PDF, with numbered pages, and with sections labeled A, B, and so on as detailed below.

  1. Write a summary statement about your mastery of Principles 0 through 9, as listed on page 8 of the course handbook. Your statement should assign to each principle one of these three levels of mastery:

    Your statement should also say how your mastery has changed since the start of the course.

    Please organize your statement by current level of mastery and by degree of change, not principle by principle.

  2. To support your statement, include one self-assessment packet for each writing principle or editing skill for which you have demonstrated mastery through peer review and instructor review. Principles 3 (Who did What to Whom) and 5 (Information Flow) must be reviewed at this level. Thorough reviews of other principles are optional.

  3. If you claim partial or full mastery of a principle that has not been through peer review and instructor review, please support your statement as follows.

    For each such principle, present up to one page of supporting material:

    1. Repeat whether you claim full mastery or partial mastery.

    2. Include one or two work samples that support your claim. Ideally, include two samples: one of your early work, which might not show any mastery, and one of later work, which shows mastery at the level you claim. It is also fine to include an early sample and a revised version of that sample.

      If you can’t include two samples, present just one, and make sure that it demonstrates mastery.

    3. Explain briefly, in writing, why you believe your samples support your claim.

    Be sure that all material appears on a single page. I need to mark up the text of your samples, so a reference to work that appears elsewhere is not acceptable.

  4. Summarize and analyze your ability to work in brief, daily sessions. Consult the short handout on this topic.

  5. Show the results of your experiments with two or more techniques of prewriting. Exactly what you show will depend both on your results and on how comprehensive your records are. In an ideal demonstration I am looking for two properties:

    Please choose your two techniques according to these guidelines:

    Once you’ve chosen your techniques, an ideal presentation has four parts:

    All the materials you need should be in your class portfolio. But if you have not kept old versions of everything you will need, don’t panic. Rely instead on your lab notebook, and instead of showing the work, describe it. Not as good, but better than nothing.

  6. Summarize how your writing practices have changed, what they are now, and how effective they are. This summary should be drawn from the two letters to your future self which you have already written, as informed by my feedback on that work. You may also, if you think it valuable, add information from your lab notebook.

  7. Write, in one-half to two pages, a plan for your future development as a successful, independent writer. A convincing plan has these elements.

    To summarize, a good plan has goals grounded in observation of strengths and weaknesses, actions that work toward the goals, and a time, place, and materials for each action. And a good plan makes realistic assumptions about your potential for future progress.

How your work will be evaluated

Here is how I expect to evaluate your work:

I will not evaluate your work by comparing your learning to anybody else’s learning. Not everybody is starting from the same position, and not everybody speaks English natively. I expect that you have achieved some learning that is significant for you, and that you can continue to learn and improve going forward. Whether your progress is greater or lesser than the progress of any other student is not relevant and has no bearing on your grade.