As compositionists we want to encourage our students to look beyond the discreet units of evaluation and see themselves as developing writers. Portfolio methodology has provided us a way to view student writers’ progress over time. Recent work with electronic web portfolios allows students to incorporate both the textual and visual dimensions of their work as they revise for new audiences and purposes. Generally this assignment should act as a comprehensive final class project in which students re-see their work over the term as they bring together both the textual and the visual. The project asks them to engage in deep revision as they revisit earlier work in the class and present it in a new, electronic format. In this online course portfolio students choose, revise and recast their best work in the course. I have used two versions of this assignment in my classes. In the first version, students create individual web portfolios and in the second version they work collaboratively to create a single class website that includes students’ individual documents and universal themes. I have included links to samples of both: Collaborative Class Portfolio: Composition II – Spring 2005 Individual Web Portfolios: Amanda’s Website Danae’s Website Nate’s Website Getting Started I usually start students off with a heuristic that asks them to reflect upon their work over the course of the term and look for connections, patterns and themes. Basically, this is a revision assignment in which students attempt to re-see and extend upon their ideas through combining the textual and the visual into a single expression of meaning. Here are some examples of the kinds of heuristic questions I use to ignite their thinking and get them thinking about design decisions. Invention Heuristic: Reading and Interpreting Ideas and Images

1. What stands out as unusual or interesting?
2. What connections or patterns do you see between the images and texts?
3. What do the images and texts say about you and how you see the world?
4. What do they say about your beliefs and ideologies?
5. What specifically did you learn about yourself and your world as you reviewed them?
6. What might others learn through interacting with them?
7. What is a metaphor that you might use to describe the body of work? The individual sections?
8. What are some themes you see emerging?
9. What are some outside sources that might help you communicate your meanings?
10. How do you see the images dividing up and clustering together (categorizing) in relation to your own issues and ideas?
11. What do the images say as a whole body of work?
12. What do you feel you need to say or do to them to present them as a cohesive expression of meaning?
13. What design elements/colors/fonts are you considering?

Project Structure and Guidelines Once students complete the heuristic they work to create a cohesive website that pulls together their words, ideas, and images. They should draw from earlier writings in the class. These student websites should be viewed as more than just a container for their work. Instead, they should be thematically arranged and communicate their purposes in meaningful ways for a web audience (beyond the classroom). For example, chapters should be more than assignment names and should reflect themes that are unique to their ideas, perspectives and images. I have students revise their contents for this new rhetorical situation and provide context statements to explain assignments. Although I allow a lot of freedom, I provide students with the following structural guidelines and design issues to consider:

• Overall Title
• Table of Contents – Home Page
• Introduction
• Captioning of individual images
• Chapter Titles/Links*
• Chapter Introductions*
• Epilogue or Conclusion
• Layout and Form
• Design and Presentation

Website Contents: The websites might include the following artifacts from the class:

• Personal Essays
• Digital Images
• Visual Representations
• Research Papers
• Journal Writings
• Collaborative Projects
• Presentations
• Excerpted Quotations
• Outside Resources

Collaborative Class Portfolios: When students prepare collaborative class portfolios they should engage in the same processes detailed above. However, under this structure I usually break them into work teams that address different sections of the content. They are responsible for coordinating between the work teams to come up with a comprehensive website with a consistent theme and appearance.