March meetings coming up

Our March meetings are coming up next week, 3 and 4 March, and we'll be in the usual SC 206 g/h location.

We'd like to use the March meetings to start the process of thinking about how to incorporate portfolios into our first year comp courses. Doug alerted us to this likelihood last year, and it seems time to follow up on it for a couple of reasons, but mainly because portfolios will give us the means to assess our writing courses more effectively than in some past attempts. Since we'd like to involve our instructors as much as possible in the planning stages, please consider sharing your experiences with portfolios at our meetings next week. Think, for instance, about:

1. How many assignments you ask students to include: how many (or which particular papers) are required, and which are open to student choice?
2. How heavily do (or perhaps should) portfolios weigh in final course grades?
3. How do you incorporate students' reflective writing (i.e. self-assessment) into the portfolio?
4. How much weight do you give to revision?

Certainly too, share both positive and negative experiences you've had with portfolios, so that we can not only consider the directions we should pursue, but also anticipate challenges that may arise from particular approaches.

I'll bring some hard copies to the meeting, but in case you'd like to get ahead of it, or if the electronic version works best, I'm attaching the schedule preference form for fall 2009 on the listserv. The deadline to turn them in is 13 March.

A few people have asked about summer classes, so let me update everyone now. I hope to see a summer schedule by the end of the week. If you're interested in summer classes, please drop me an email by Monday.

See you soon.