Welcome to Mr. B’s Web Portfolio

Your web portfolio will house your Self-Assessment essay, in which you assess how well you achieved the Course Learning Outcomes listed on the class syllabus. The other pages on your site will be the work you have done throughout the semester that helped you to achieve the Learning Outcomes. In your Self-Assessment essay, you will cite your own work as evidence of how well you achieved the Learning Outcomes. You will want to include all major assignments, but you might consider including drafts, quizzes, and in-class writing assignments as well.

The homepage of your Web Portfolio can be your Self-Assessment. Below is an example:

 

Sarah Student’s Self-Assessment for Writing for Engineering

Over the course of the Spring 2016 semester, I developed a lot as a writer thanks to ENGL 21007, also known as Writing for Engineering. Throughout this class, I learned that it’s important to start writing early and to not be afraid of beginning with a terrible first draft. Because of this, I was able to achieve the Learning Outcomes outlined on the syllabus through the readings, activities, and assignments. Each assignment was entirely distinct, yet connected by the similar ideas associated with the different genres of technical communication.

​          Learning objective one states, “acknowledge your and others’ range of linguistic differences as resources, and draw on those resources to develop rhetorical sensibility.” This means being able to identify the best way to get your point across taking into account the many variables that may affect the relaying of the point. There were widely ranging ethnicities and backgrounds in this class and, as such, everyone had their own perceptions and understanding. Peer reviewing others’ works were really where I achieved this learning objective as well as the presentation since my group and I had to make the PowerPoint easy to follow for everyone in the class and explain the lesser known terms that we used.

​           Learning objective two is very simple and states, “enhance strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessment.” I was able to achieve this throughout the semester for different assignments by revising my final drafts from feedback from my peers. I also revised the assignments again before posting them on this website, fixing the most important mistakes Mr. Barber commented on as well as grammatical errors. For example, Draft 1 which was the resume I submitted to Mr. Barber, had the comment that relevant course work should by a sub-point under Education/academics which was fixed under the “Resume” tab above. This online portfolio containing every assignment, as well as some of its drafts and self-assessment, allowed me to improve each skill listed in objective two. Another example of the re-drafting process is that I added education on my professional letter for Draft 2.

​           Learning objective three states, “negotiate your own writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of genre, medium, and rhetorical situation,” and very similar to the first learning objective. Looking at other people’s work during peer review made me improve my writing skills as well get a new perspective on my assignments before submitting them to Mr. Barber. The resume along with the lab report is also connected to this objective since we had to think about the audience in order to make it effective. For example, the language that I used for my resume is completely different from that of my lab report. The resume is structured in a way that makes it appealing to the reader and easy to follow while the lab report needs to be in a paragraph form with all the important information.

​             Learning objective four states, “develop and engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes.” I achieved this learning objective by peer reviews and group assignments as they both involved the collaborative and social aspects of writing. The assignment that had the most collaborative work was probably the proposal and the presentation since we as a group of three had to agree on different aspects like dividing the work equally, the topic, outlines and how to present it to the class. For the topic, me and my group members first started out with water pollution. However, after we did our research we decided as a group that the topic was too broad and we decided to focus on the pool here on campus.

​            Learning objective five states, “engage in genre analysis and multimodal composing to explore effective writing across disciplinary contexts and beyond.” Evidence of my achieving this learning objective may be seen in many of assignments, from the reading assignments and the quizzes that we had in this class as well as the process description and the proposal. Each assignment had a different objective and required very different types of language and analysis. The different writing assignments allowed for my writing to expand and improve.

​            Learning objective six deals with, “formulating and articulating a stance through and in your writing.” The best assignment to accurately represent what was probably the lab report since we had to come up with a hypothesis and prove it.  The peer review workshop for this assignment was very helpful because I was able to see what details my classmates stressed upon as well as disagree to what I thought was important and necessary.

And finally, learning objectives seven and eight which deal with “practice using various library resources, online databases, and the Internet to locate sources appropriate to your writing projects,” and “strengthening your source use practices (including evaluating, integrating, quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, analyzing, and citing sources).” As the semester proceeded, the assignments got to a point where use of the Internet and other outside sources were inevitable to research ideas and to learn about the history behind the topic. This can be seen with the technical description, proposal, and presentation. With the usage of outside sources, regardless of the form in which they came, there was a need for in-text citations and overall citations by means of a works cited page. With these assignments, I was able to achieve these final learning objectives and well as learn how to cite correctly in text and create a reference list using the IEEE format.

Overall, I have learned a lot in Writing for Engineering, much more than I initially expected. The skills I’ve gained in this course will, without a doubt, be essential in my future success.

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